The post California’s History of Arresting Minorities for Marijuana appeared first on High Times.
Despite its reputation for being a progressive state, California has a long history of arresting minorities for marijuana. But is there about to be a majors shift in the criminal justice system?
San Francisco’s District Attorney George Gascon will begin clearing the record of individuals convicted of marijuana offenses from 1975 to the present, under the authority of Prop 64 which legalized cannabis in the state.
Gascon has acknowledged that marijuana laws were unevenly enforced and that they disproportionately affected minorities.
One objective of this policy is “to address the wrongs that were caused by the failures of the war on drugs … and begin to fix the hard that was done … specifically to communities of color.”
The Racial Disparity in Weed Arrests
It is widely recognized that arrests rates for black people have been several times higher than marijuana possession arrest rates for white people throughout the United States. However, this is not only true of marijuana law enforcement in California as a state, but also in San Francisco.
California decriminalized marijuana in 1975. However, the Moscone Act did not actually remove criminal penalties for marijuana possession. It instead did away with custodial arrests and jail sentences for the crime of possession of one ounce.
Police began to issue citations for possession offenses, leading to court summons which could be resolved by payment of a $100 fine. In 2010 State Senate Bill 1440 further reduced possession from a misdemeanor to a civil infraction, like a traffic ticket, also subject to a maximum $100 fine.
Throughout the history of the enforcement of these laws, black people