• RBWells@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    No, a correlation between being black and being arrested for weed. In my city, they made the legal status of the drug indeterminate and gave cops DISCRETION on whether to arrest or cite someone for having pot. Not a felony now in any event, misdemeanor or civil citation or nothing but how do you think this discretion will be used?

    • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
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      5 months ago

      Nixon did specifically consider weed a hippies and black people thing, but even if that was statistically true selective enforcement was always the plan.

      • Tiefling IRL@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        5 months ago

        You want to know what this [war on drugs] was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying?

        We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.

        Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.

        • Feathercrown@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          It’s baffling to me how info like this is public and people still believe the republicans were the good guys.