While
Colorado and Washington have de-criminalized recreational use of marijuana and
twenty states allow use for medical purposes, a Louisiana man was sentenced
to twenty years in prison in New Orleans criminal court for possessing 15
grams, .529 of an ounce, of marijuana.
Corey Ladd, 27, had prior drug convictions and was sentenced
September 4, 2013 as a “multiple offender to 20 years hard labor at the
Department of Corrections.”
Marijuana use still remains a ticket to jail in most of the
country and prohibition is enforced in a highly racially discriminatory
manner. A recent report of the
ACLU, “The War on Marijuana in Black and White,” documents millions of
arrests for marijuana and shows the “staggeringly disproportionate impact on
African Americans.”
Nationwide, the latest numbers from the FBI
report that over 762,000 arrests per year are for marijuana, almost exactly
half of all drug arrests.
Even though blacks
and whites use marijuana at similar rates, black people are 3.73 times more
likely to be arrested for possession of marijuana than white people.
For example, Louisiana
arrests about 13,000 people per year for marijuana, 60% of them African
Americans. Over 84 percent were for
possession only. While Louisiana’s
population is 32 percent black, 60 percent of arrests for marijuana are African
American making it the 9th most discriminatory state nationwide. In Tangipahoa Parish, blacks are 11.8 times
more likely to be arrested for marijuana than whites and in St. Landry Parish the
rate of black arrests for marijuana is 10.7 times as likely as whites, landing
both parishes in the worst 15 in the country.
In Louisiana, a person
can get up to six months in jail for first marijuana conviction, up to five
years in prison for the second conviction and up to twenty years in prison for
the third. In fact, the Louisiana
Supreme Court recently overturned a sentence of five years as too lenient
for a fourth possession of marijuana and ordered the person sentenced to at
least 13 years.
Jack Cole of Law
Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) argues that “the “war on drugs” has
been, is, and forever will be, a total and abject failure. This is not a war on drugs, this is a war on
people, our own people, our children, our parents, ourselves.” LEAP, which is
made up of thousands of current and former members of the law enforcement and
criminal justice communities, has been advocating for the de-criminalization of
drugs and replacing it with regulation and control since 2002.
Arrests and jail sentences continue even though public opinion
has moved against it. National polling
by the Pew
Research Center show a majority of people support legalizing the use of
marijuana. Even in Louisiana, a
recent poll by
Public Policy Polling found more than half support legalization and regulation
of marijuana.
Karen O’Keefe, who lived in New Orleans for years and now
works as Director of State Policies at the Marijuana
Policy Project, said "A sentence of 20 years in prison for possessing
a substance that is safer that alcohol is out of step with Louisiana voters,
national trends, and basic fairness and justice. Limited prison space and prosecutors' time
should be spent on violent and serious crime, not on prosecuting and
incarcerating people who use a substance that nearly half of all adults have
used."
Defense lawyers are appealing the twenty year sentence for
Mr. Ladd, but the hundreds of thousands of marijuana arrests continue each
year. This insanity must be stopped.
Bill
teaches at Loyola University New Orleans and volunteers with the Center for
Constitutional Rights. You
can reach Bill at quigley77@gmail.com.
Image above from New Orleans Indymedia.
