California NAACP backs recreational marijuana use

Source: McClatchy


* Posted on Tuesday, June 29, 2010

California NAACP backs recreational marijuana use

By Peter Hecht | Sacramento Bee

The California chapter of the NAACP is endorsing a November ballot initiative to legalize recreational marijuana use – and Sacramento minister Ron Allen is furious.

Their competing arguments stir debate over which perceived threat is greater for African Americans – police exploiting existing marijuana law to target urban minorities or legalized pot endangering youths and communities.

In a news conference today, the California State Conference of the NAACP is due to throw its support behind the initiative to legalize marijuana for adults over 21, allow small residential cultivation and permit cities to tax and regulate pot sales.

In a statement, Alice Huffman, the state NAACP president, said the organization is backing the initiative, Proposition 19, to counter marijuana arrest rates that she contends unfairly target African Americans.




Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/06/29/96720/california-naacp-backs-recreational.html

:kick: :smoke:

it's a rational approach to drug war stupidity.

Source: Capitol Weekly

On Monday, the California State Conference of the NAACP announced its “unconditional endorsement” of a November initiative that would legalize the recreational use of marijuana.

On Tuesday, the NAACP said why. According to a just-released study by the Drug Policy Alliance, blacks are far more likely to be arrested for pot possession than whites — even though statistically, blacks use marijuana at lower rates than whites. The Alliance, a national advocacy group, favors treatment rather than arrest or imprisonment for people suffering from drug dependency.

...

At a press conference at the California NAACP’s Sacramento headquarters, the group’s president, Alice Huffman, portrayed marijuana laws as a means of criminalizing young black men. She was joined by several other African-America leaders, including Aubry Stone, president of the California Black Chamber of Commerce, and Neil Franklin of the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP).

“It is time for them to stop using my community to fill the prisons,” Huffman said. “Once you get into the system, the next time you get arrested, they bump you up .”


Read more: http://www.capitolweekly.net/article.php?_c=yy7w3n62rw173l&xid=yy7vak8i1gh0ku&done=.yy7w3n62rwq73l

be a huge savings. This country does some pretty ridiculous things over and over and over again.

Thanks for the thread, Ed Barrow.:thumbsup:

in the prison industry.

Great job. Hang in there.

What the fuck are they thinking?

:sarcasm:

they support legalization. I imagine that most of its membership views the possibility of increased use as a lesser evil than African Americans being singled out for pot arrests.