A new interactive website from
the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) highlights how many lives
are derailed and billions of dollars wasted fighting a racially
biased war on drugs in America.
The site, called The
Uncovery, offers state-by-state statistics on U.S. marijuana
arrests, emphasizing racial disparities and the cost of enforcing
drug laws.
The stats are based on data from the
ACLU’s “War on Marijuana” report. For the U.S. overall, someone
is arrested for marijuana every 0.01 hours and this person is 3.73
times more likely to be black than white. The site notes that the
U.S. spent more than $3.6 billion enforcing marijuana laws in 2010
and that 88 percent of marijuana arrests are for possession (in New
York and Texas, that figure is 97 percent). The Uncovery also
breaks down marijuana arrest and spending stats by state. Let’s
take a look.
The 10 states spending the most on marijuana law
enforcement:
1. New York: $678,450,560
2. California: $490,966,080
3. Texas: $251,648,800
4. Florida: $228,635,840
5. Illinois: $221,431,776
6. New Jersey: $127,342,512
7. Georgia: $121,898,152
8. Ohio: $120,148,064
9. Maryland: $106,702,784
10. Pennsylvania: $100,748,528
Staggering, no? And the disparities in black-to-white arrest
ratios are equally horrifying.
The 10 worst states for racially biased marijuana
arrests:
In ___, a black person is ___
times more likely to be arrested than a white
person for having marijuana.
1. Iowa – 8.33
2. D.C. – 8.05
3. Minnesota – 7.81
4. Illinois – 7.56
5. Wisconsin – 5.98
6. Kentucky – 5.95
7. Pennsylvania – 5.19
8. South Dakota – 4.78
9. Nebraska – 4.65
10. New York – 4.52
States with the smallest racial disparities in marijuana arrests
were Hawaii (where blacks were only 0.99 times as likely as whites
to be arrested for marijuana), Alaska (1.6 times more likely), New
Mexico (1.86), Oregon (2.08), and Maine (2.13). All five of these
states have very small African American populations
overall.
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