blacks get busted more than whites in New yORK tIMES...

Racial Disparities Found to Persist as Drug Arrests Rise
comments (40) E-MailPrint Reprints Save Share
DiggFacebookMixxYahoo! BuzzPermalink

By ERIK ECKHOLM
Published: May 6, 2008
More than two decades after President Ronald Reagan escalated the war on drugs, arrests for drug sales or, more often, drug possession are still rising. And despite public debate and limited efforts to reduce them, large disparities persist in the rate at which blacks and whites are arrested and imprisoned for drug offenses, even though the two races use illegal drugs at roughly equal rates.




I was driving cab a few years back and picked up two kids at cabrini green. A very nortorious housing project two blocks away from one of the richest neighborhoods in town... the place has since been mostly torn down, but people were afraid of the place for years, and with good reason. Regardless, this particular day I dropped a woman off at Cabrini and two kids jumped in and gave me an address. I had gone about two blocks when I got pulled over. I of course had a bag of weed in the glove box, since I smoked almost all the time there at the end of my driving years... well, the cops come up to the window and ask where I got these guys. I told them, "I dropped off this lady at cabrini green and they jumped in, that's all." The cops make the two kids get out of the car, and make a deal out of searching them... Finally, they come back to my window and says, "Be careful," to me.

As I pulled away, I go to the kids, "Sure as hell glad he didn't search me, I just bought a bag of weed."
They had just went through this whole thing with cops with blank expressions, like they had been through this so many times... I ask them, "Does that happen to you a lot?"
"All the time, man."

I can see why the statistics like those that come out of new york could be looked at as a conspiracy to jail minorities. It also points to the basic unfairness of drug laws, and how the least powerful in society get the least profit from a society- pot at least should be legal. And in New York, the statistics In the quoted article are mostly from pot busts. The article says that it is a ticket just to have it, so they ask people to empty their pockets, then say they publicly exposed the pot (which was supposed to be if you were smoking out in public or someplace inapropriate ).

I am so sick of so many things about america. One has to end up going half full or half empty... right? THe shameless side is that so many how so little, and so few so much. This country has always replaced wealth as aristocracy. Wealth with none of the noblesse oblige ideas; wealth stripped down to pure and simple greeed to make and spend and ... I don't know. People do as they do for so many reasons, but most of them, it seems to me, have to do with the habits of the people they are raised around. The wealthy keep their money. Most people make about the same amount of money as their parents make. You know the right people, you get a good fucking job coming out of college.

Once you have the good job you can buy your way out of things like pot busts, as far as possession goes, but it is still something that should be so legal. Why this countries politicians refuse to acknowledge that we are jailing too many people... people who will be forever changed by their experience; you are not just offered the opportunity to be a hard person in jail, it is required to maintain your mental balance. I hate the thought of so many having to go through such hells over something that should be a persons fundamental right ... how and what someone chooses to put in their body is up to the law to do things about, such as meth, which is horrifying and I am so fucking glad it hasn't slammed into Chicago anywhere near me. I had quit driving cab before the stuff rose, but it was slow coming in here. I watched a documentary that said it started from production plants in mexico, and worked its way east... a dire, free to watch Frontline...

I wonder sometimes, when I write all these meth head characters, if htere is anyway at all that people could think I am endorsing this shit?

Pot is different. The pot arrests really are a punishment against people for being counter culture. Everyone knows that pot is better than drink for their bodies, minds, and souls. You do not hear of people smoking pot and beating their wives. Not that wife beaters can't smoke weed, too... we all know though, statistically, drinking causes the most problems.

Pot causes more problems by being illegal than any possible consequences of its ready availability. Already getting pot is easy as hell in america. It would remove the criminal element. Save our children from having to learn how to be a criminal thinking individual to survive jails...


There is no politician running for president with the guts to take on this issue, of course. Maybe as a lame duck issue for one them.... we'll see.