Illustration by Michael Burmesch
Handcuffed hands
Decriminalization and legalization of cannabis both lead to a significant reduction in racial imbalance in arrests, a new country-wide study found. Led by researchers from Saint Louis University and Eastern Virginia Medical School, and published by the American Medical Association, the study highlights the intimate link between the criminalization of marijuana and the disproportionate arrest rates that black people—Black youths in particular—are subjected to.
Naturally, this is not news to anybody who pays attention to the fundamentally racist mechanisms of the so-called War on Drugs. Despite having the same marijuana consumption rates, white Americans are arrested at a much lower frequency than Black Americans. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) published research showing that Black people are arrested roughly four times more often than their white counterparts for similar marijuana habits, and almost always for simple possession. Despite the racial bias inherent to the violent repression of drug possession being well-documented, there is little research proving that we could collectively end this racial imbalance by enacting policy changes. This is what researchers set out to do with this most recent study.
Researchers compared arrest data in 43 states, half of which passed some form of cannabis reform, from decriminalization to full legalization, from January 2008 to December 2019, to determine the effect of each policy change on race-based arrest data. The results are consistent across the board, showing a seemingly inevitable correlation between changing marijuana enforcement policy with the racial disparity within arrest numbers.
Reducing Black Arrests
Legalizing marijuana reduced the arrest rate of Black Americans by 561 out of 100,000 on average. In California, for instance, this corresponds to 13,000 Black individuals who would have been arrested in the previous status quo but who avoided seeing the inside of a cell for minor, non-violent possession of a harmless plant. Legalizing marijuana also reduced arrests of white Americans by 195 out of 100,000, keeping true with numbers demonstrating that white people were arrested much less often for the same offense. When a state passed decriminalization instead of legalizations, arrests were reduced by 448 per 100.000 for Black people and 117 per 100.000 for white people respectively.
However, make no mistake: Legalization is not in any way inferior to decriminalization when it comes to tackling systemic racism. Seeing that Black youths fare better under decriminalization and that the reduction in arrest rates (minus 561 for legalization and minus 448 for decriminalization), it could be easy to conclude that both are somewhat equivalent. This is not the case, because states that choose to refuse legalization in favor of simple decriminalization are viewed as racist to begin with. The final arrest rates in 2019 in states that legalized marijuana are 38 and 15.9 arrests per 100,000 Black and white folks respectively. The same year, states that only decriminalized marijuana boast arrest rates of 361.4 and 102.9 per 100,000 Black and white people respectively. Decriminalization leads to an arrest rate far greater than full legalization.
States that favored full legalization are more liberal to begin with; states that consistently shunned legalization also arrested Black people at a much higher rate before any cannabis reform. While these states used to arrest white people at about the same rate as legalization-friendly states, these decriminalization-friendly states used to arrest Black people at nearly 150% of the rate of their more liberal neighbor before cannabis reform came to pass.
“States that implemented legalization saw a reduction in the arrest disparity from 2018 to 2019, whereas states that had no policy changes saw an increase in the relative racial disparity during this period,” researchers conclude. States that refuse cannabis reform all see a consistent increase in arrests for Black people but not for white people, thus deepening the race gap among arrestees.
Long-Lasting Impact
One interesting conclusion from this study is that the reduction in racial disparities started on average two years before legalization passed, in states that picked legalization, and the reduction in racial inequalities is long-lasting. Researchers suggest that this pre-legalization reaction is due to “social factors, such as changing social norms that drove statewide ballot initiatives and led to local jurisdictions deciding not to arrest for possession of small amounts of cannabis.”
In states that only passed decriminalization, the decrease in arrests among the Black community is immediate upon adopting the law, but the reduction in racial disparities is short-lived, often returning to a status quo that disproportionately disadvantages Black people within three years. “Decriminalization, which is a civil penalty, may still exacerbate existing racial disparities,” the researchers write. “For example, a small fine may be merely a nuisance to those with means but serve as a burden to those without.”
Regardless of the merits of decriminalization versus legalization, one key point cannot be overlooked: In states where no cannabis reform was approved, “there was a clear increase in racial disparity as possession arrest rates remained stable for white individuals and increased consistently for Black individuals. This increase is concerning and highlights the need for immediate policy change and implementation. This is in stark contrast to the increase in arrests seen in states without a cannabis policy change, suggesting that adult arrest rate disparities will likely continue to increase in states absent an intentional effort to address the issue.”
