On marijuana, race and Connecticut’s future
“We are also working with our neighboring states as we consider regulating marijuana for adult use. Like it or not, legalized marijuana is a short drive away in Massachusetts and New York is soon to follow. Coordinated regional regulation is our best chance to protect public health by displacing illicit sellers with trusted providers. And it’s an opportunity to right the wrongs of a war on drugs that has disproportionately impacted our minority communities. Right now, what you can buy legally in Massachusetts could land you in prison for up to a year in Connecticut. We just marked the 100th anniversary of Prohibition. How did that work out?
Gov. Ned Lamont from the 2020
State of the State address It was the summer of 1973. I had just completed my freshman year at UCLA. It was my first day of work as an employee for the Washington, D.C., Recreation Department. I was assigned to work at Dunbar High School on N Street in Washington. My brother was dropping me off for work. As we approached the school, a police car pulled us over and said my brother had made an illegal right turn. The police asked us to get out the car. They searched the car and then searched both my brother and me. They found a marijuana joint on my brother. We were arrested and taken to the D.C. jail — what a way to spend your first day on the job!
We were released to my father and given a court date. We hired a legendary D.C. lawyer, Wiley Branton, who famously represented the Little Rock 9 during the crisis at Central High. The judge agreed to Branton’s request to expunge our files. But before leaving the courtroom, the judge sternly warned us to not come back, because if there were a next time, he would not be so lenient.
The war on drugs had just started. Nixon had won the 1972 election. The Vietnam War was still raging, although there were talks of ending it. But Nixon won that election on a law-and-order platform. He was against hippies, black “radicals” (radicals meant every black person who did not kiss his feet), liberal intellectuals and anybody else who did not agree with him. His enemies’ list would come back to haunt him.
In 1965, fewer than 50,000 Americans were arrested for marijuana possession or distribution. By 1973, the year of my run-in with the D.C. police, more than 400,000 Americans were arrested. This number reached 750,000 in 2010. Imagine an average of 500,000 Americans arrested annually. Over 40 years, that adds up to over
20 million marijuana arrests. Who were these people and what impact did those arrests have on their lives?
We know from Department of Justice data that blacks and Hispanics were disproportionately targeted by this disastrous War on Drugs. This was not a War on Drugs; this was a war on black and brown people.
According to recent federal data, white Americans are incarcerated at a rate of 241 per 100,000, compared to 1,195 per 100,000 for Hispanics, and
2,260 per 100,000 for black Americans. By 2016,
49.5 percent of America’s prison population (the largest in the world) was in jail because of drug convictions. More than half of these men are black or Hispanic. It also is important to note there is no evidence that whites consume marijuana or other illegal substances at lower rates than blacks or Hispanics; in fact, the data suggests that whites use more drugs than black and Hispanics. But clearly, the law is not blind.
What impact did these arrests have on these men and their families? Being convicted is equivalent to having a scarlet letter painted on your forehead with permanent ink. Even with “banning the box” on job applications, the damage is done. The Brookings Institute in a recent study showed that 33 percent of all 30-year-old men who are not working are either in prison, in jail or are unemployed ex-prisoners. Brookings also found that after a year out of prison, only 55 percent of these men reported having any earnings, and only 20 percent of these men with earnings had annual income greater than $15,000.
I submit that having a conviction on your record for marijuana — or any drug, for that matter — is a life sentence of economic poverty, family instability, recidivism and a life of criminality. No one can support themselves for $15,000 a year, let alone a family.
I was lucky. I was given a second chance. I graduated from UCLA and went on to earn a Ph.D. in economics from Yale. And in one of life’s ironies, I came back to Washington to work in the Jimmy Carter White House in 1978 and 1979 on the Council of Economic Advisers. I often wonder, as I approach retirement, what my life would have been like had I not had the resources to hire a talented lawyer that hot summer day in 1973. I also wonder how many more men, of all races, had their lives and their family’s lives ruined by public policy stupidity.
Lamont should be commended for having the wisdom to realize this “war” must end. Unfortunately, generations of lives have been ruined in what can only be described as institutional racism in our criminal justice system. It is too bad we are not also thinking about correcting the very real harm done to the millions of Americans and thousands of Connecticut citizens who were, and continue to be, victims of this foolish war.
We know from Department of Justice data that blacks and Hispanics were disproportionately targeted by this disastrous War on Drugs. This was not a War on Drugs; this was a war on black and brown people.