Whites Smoke More Pot, but Latinos Are Arrested More

photo by: Torben Hansen

Yeah. Try your best to not feign sarcastic surprise.

Funny thing is, we need a study for that?

Apparently the NAACP ponied the cash, and published the result. The headline should include blacks, as in blacks and Latinos are arrested more, but I edited the header given our site’s emphasis. Also, the report is about arrests in California, but I believe it’s indicative of a nation-wide relaity.  Still, it doesn’t diminish the fact: it’s not a crime to be a white pot head…man. OK, maybe I stretched a bit, but it seems you’re more likely to be arrested for pot possession if you’re not white (Taking a bow for the semantic tap-dance).

According to a story on AOL, the NAACP report says that “Since 1990, arrests for nearly every serious crime have declined in California. Yet arrests for possession of marijuana, usually for very small amounts, have tripled. In 2009 alone, police departments in California made 61,000 marijuana possession arrests. The people arrested were disproportionately African-Americans and Latinos, and overwhelmingly young people, especially young men.”

Of course, all we need to do is poke our heads in jails across the country to see who’s serving time for pot possession. We know it’s minorities that make up the vast majority of the inmate population. And we’ve always known that it wasn’t because we smoked more pot (Not that we want to turn it into a competition: We’ve got pot-heads yes we do…!). Latinos and blacks just get busted more, that’s all.

By the way, Latino support for California’s proposition 19, that would legalize marijuana, is said to be eroding.  See, if they’d been nicer to our marihuanos the white California pot-heads would’ve had it their way. Not that they need it.

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