Friday, August 24, 2012

Stephen C. Webster — Drug war’s racial disparity moves NAACP to embrace marijuana legalization

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), one of the nation’s oldest civil rights groups, said at its Colorado-Montana-Wyoming state conference on Thursday that its members support Colorado’s marijuana legalization ballot initiative.
“We are committed to changing policies that result in a disproportionate number of African-Americans and other people of color being introduced into the criminal justice system,” NAACP chapter president Rosemary Harris Lytle said, according to a media advisory.
“With this endorsement, NAACP activists in Colorado take a significant step: calling for equity, justice and more effective policy — such as the proposal to regulate marijuana like alcohol in our state,” she added. “The flawed drug policies that so negatively impact our communities must be replaced with policy that is not disproportionately punitive based on race but that helps us get to the root causes of drug use and abuse in America.”
The Raw Story
Drug war’s racial disparity moves NAACP to embrace marijuana legalization
Stephen C. Webster

Prohibition failed and in the process created a well-financed criminal underground. Why did anyone expect anything different from the war on drugs? Or now the war on sex?


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