Waiting to Inhale: Cannabis Legalization and the Fight for Racial Justice, by Akwasi Owusu-Bempah and Tahira Rehmatullah

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Waiting to Inhale

The War on Drugs took many casualties and the toll continues to mount. As Waiting to Inhale notes, there has been a “lessening of cannabis hostilities,” yet cannabis remains illegal in many states (including Wisconsin) and federal reforms have stalled even as other nations leap ahead of the U.S.

Waiting to Inhale presents a serious topic in a surprisingly entertaining format. The two authors ping-pong anecdotes with each other, frequently handing the paddle to the drug war’s victims and opponents. Akwasi Owusu-Bempah is a sociologist at the University of Toronto and Tahira Rehmatullah is with Highland Venture Partners, an investment firm, and the Last Prisoner Project, a nonprofit dedicated to cannabis reform. Owusu-Bempah points out that while Canada legalized cannabis in 2018, its previous policies, from U.S. pressure as well as endemic ignorance, mirrored America’s. Rehmatullah is a rare Pakistani American woman in a cannabis field dominated by white males. 

The authors’ overriding theme is the “complex relationship between law enforcement, racism and drug laws.” The pre-legalization Canadian statistics Owusu-Bempah marshals look very much like the numbers in the U.S. While cannabis use among white, black and brown people is similar, ethnic minorities are arrested and sentenced at disproportionately higher rates. Their families usually have no influence, and their complexion makes them moving targets.

Waiting to Inhale’s call for social justice extends beyond ending the ill-conceived War on Drugs, whose major accomplishment was to fill prisons and break communities, to repair the damage done. How about expunging criminal records for simple possession?