Search Results: naacp (32)


Think marijuana use, cultivation and possession of limited amounts of pot should be legal for adults 21 and up? Think you should be able to purchase some pot at a local, neighborhood store possibly right in the shadow of the nation’s capitol? You’re not alone.
The D.C. marijuana initiative has received the support of the local chapters of the NAACP and the National Organization for Women.


The NAACP of Florida announced that it is endorsing the passing of Amendment 2.
“Florida State Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People proudly announces its support of United for Care and the passage of Amendment 2 this November,” a news release from the group announced. “The NAACP, the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization, has worked successfully with allies of all races and plays a significant role in improving the lives of minorities in America.”

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-CA.

Yes, the Respect State Marijuana Laws Act is a good thing. It would force the feds to actually have to respect state marijuana laws on paper, as opposed to the less binding, more vague verbal assurance being paid to the marijuana community right now by the Department of Justice. It’s such a good thing that more than 20 lawmakers and several groups have signed on to endorse it, including the Marijuana Policy Project and NAACP.
That last one is a little bit ironic, given that the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican from California, has been labeled as a racist by several people, including our sister paper, the L.A. Weekly. Is that the case? Does it matter? Click over to the Weekly to find out for yourself and take part in the discussion.

Though many say the bill has a snowball’s chance in a forest fire of passing, Pennsylvania’s proposed recreational marijuana legalization bill received the support of the NAACP yesterday.
In a press conference, David Scott with the Pennsylvania NAACP, called the war on drugs a “catastrophic failure” and said the bill would be a step towards addressing the racial disparity among marijuana arrests in the state. Figures show blacks are more than five times more likely to be arrested for marijuana than whites in Pennsylvania, despite studies showing usage rates between whites and blacks are about the same.

Favim.com

Civil Rights Leaders Denounce Egregious Racial Disparities in Marijuana Law Enforcement at the Historic Five Points Intersection in East Denver 
The NAACP Colorado Montana Wyoming State Area Conference has endorsed Amendment 64, the campaign to regulate marijuana like alcohol in Colorado. This endorsement is the third of its kind. The NAACP California State Conference endorsed a similar measure in 2010, and the NAACP Alaska Oregon Washington State Area Conference recently endorsed an Oregon legalization effort.  

Street Knowledge Media

Measure 80 Replaces Marijuana Prohibition With Common-Sense Regulation
The National Association for the Advancement for Colored People (NAACP) Alaska Oregon Washington State-Area Conference (AOWS-AC) has endorsed Oregon Measure 80, the Oregon Cannabis Tax Act and calls on voters who are committed to equality and civil justice to vote for Measure 80 on this November’s ballot.
“Our nation’s long, tragic, failed war on drugs has taken a disproportionate toll on people of color,” said NAACP AOWS-AC President Oscar Eason, Jr. “To right the wrongs of the past, we need to end the drug war immediately and replace it with a common-sense approach.”

Photo: The Daily Record
Benjamin Jealous, NAACP president and CEO: “These flawed drug policies that have been mostly enforced in African American communities must be stopped”

​The NAACP has just joined the list of prominent organizations and individuals calling for a major paradigm shift away from the failed and punitive “War On Drugs” and toward a health-based approach with a historic resolution passed Tuesday at the organization’s national conference in Los Angeles.

“Today the NAACP has taken a major step towards equity, justice, and effective law enforcement,” said Benjamin Todd Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP. “These flawed drug policies that have been mostly enforced in African American communities must be stopped and replaced with evidence-based practices that address the root causes of drug use and abuse in America.”
Neill Franklin, an African American former narcotics cop from Baltimore and executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), had presented a talk on the need to end the War On Drugs at the NAACP conference on Monday.
“The NAACP has been on the forefront of the struggle for civil rights and social justice in this country for over a century,” Franklin said Tuesday about the passage of the resolution.
“The fact that these leaders are joining others like the National Black Police Association in calling for an end to the ‘war on drugs’ should be a wake up call to those politicians — including and especially President Obama — who still have not come to terms with the devastation that the ‘drug war’ causes in our society and especially in communities of color,” Franklin said.

Graphic: The Hinterland Gazette

​Leaders of the NAACP’s California chapter announced Monday that they are supporting a marijuana legalization initiative on the November ballot.

“The War On Drugs is a failure and disproportionately targets young men and women of color, particularly African-American males,” said Alice Huffman, president of the NAACP’s state conference, reports Catherine Saillant at the Los Angeles Times.
The group pointed to statistics showing that last year, 62 percent of California’s marijuana arrests were of nonwhite suspects, and 42 percent were under 20 years old. The statistics were from the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice.
Cannabis arrests of African Americans occur at double, triple and even quadruple the rate of whites, despite the fact that studies show blacks use marijuana at lower rates than whites, according to NAACP officials.

Here’s your daily dose of cannabis news from the newsletter WeedWeek:

On a conference call with reporters this week, Bill Piper, the Drug Policy Alliance’s Senior Director of National Affairs, discussed the nomination of Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions (R) for U.S. Attorney General:

“Civil rights groups point out that Sen. Sessions has been one of the Senate’s most extreme voices on issues affecting immigrants, Muslims, African-Americans, Latinos, Women and the LGBT community. He has a long record of obstructing civil rights.

“In the area of drug policy reform, Sen. Sessions is a drug war dinosaur. His has nearly singlehandedly blocked bipartisan sentencing reform in the Senate. Sessions has been critical of the Obama Justice Department’s guidelines around sentencing that were designed to limit harsh sentences, and he has criticized the Justice Department’s use of consent decrees that force local police departments to address police brutality, racial profiling and other civil rights issues. He opposes giving formerly incarcerated individuals the right to vote. 
“He recently described marijuana as a dangerous drug and said that, “Good people don’t smoke marijuana.” He has criticized the Obama administration for respecting state marijuana laws. 
“If confirmed as U.S. Attorney General, Jeff Sessions could escalate the failed war on drugs. He will likely use his position to oppose any kind of sentencing or criminal justice reform…He could also undo the Cole Memo which provided guidance to U.S. attorneys instructing them to generally not raid marijuana dispensaries in states where it is legal.
“The war on drugs could also be a weapon that Sessions and the Trump administration use to spy on, investigate incarcerate or deport immigrants and other targeted groups. Already, President-elect Trump has said he wants to aggressively deport any immigrant who commits any offense, no matter how minor, including drug offenses…Senator Sessions could not only escalate the war on immigration and the war on drugs, he could combine them.

“He was deemed unfit to be a Federal judge in 1986 and I believe he will be deemed unfit to be U.S. Attorney General when the Senate looks at his history and record during confirmation hearings next year.”

Following Piper, representatives from LatinoJustice PRLDEF, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, theCouncil on American-Islamic Relations, and the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, and the Cato Institute—“massive, massive privacy concerns” – each discussed what Attorney General Sessions could mean for criminal justice and civil liberties.

As Piper writes in a blog post, it isn’t clear how state-legal marijuana businesses would be affected if Sessions wins confirmation:

“No one knows for sure what exactly to expect, but we should assume the worst. His administration, which looks set to be staffed by drug-war extremists, could go after state marijuana laws. Instead of just opposing sentencing reform, they could push for new mandatory minimums. They might demonize drugs and drug sellers to build support for mass deportations and a wall. Trump’s law-and-order rhetoric could fundamentally alter the political environment, nationally and locally.”
Piper adds:
“We need to pace ourselves, choose our battles carefully, be strategic, and perhaps most importantly, keep our morale up. We need to find ways of supporting each other…
“It’s especially important that we find ways to create division among Republicans, who now hold Congress and the White House. The more they disagree, the less they can get done. Two areas that stand out for us are marijuana and sentencing reform. We have enough Republican support on both these issues that we might be able to create dissent within the GOP if Trump tries to do something bad in these areas…
The rise of Trump and Trumpism has put a national spotlight on white supremacy and misogyny. Everywhere, people are now organizing against hate. Drug policy reformers should be part of that fight.

We can start by taking a hard look at our movement and the marijuana industry we have created. If groups draft legalization laws that  ignore racial justice, we need to call them out. If dispensaries, marijuana magazines or other marijuana businesses objectify and demean women to sell their products, or if they exclude people of color, we need to call them out. It is long past time to clean up our own house.”

The Christian Science Monitor tries to parse how or if AG Sessions will go after the industry. So does The Hill. “Pot policy in the U.S. is up in the air,” Brookings Institution scholar John Hudak tells the NYTimes.

Cannabis business lawyer Hilary Bricken shares her views at Above the Law. More from LAist, andMarijuana.com.

Pro-pot activist and journalist Tom Angell told Buzzfeed, “From a political lens, I think reversing course on [marijuana]and trying to shut down broadly popular state laws, that’s going to be a huge distraction from all the other things they care a lot more about,” Angell said. “It’s a fight that they don’t want to pick.”

To put this differently, unlike going after undocumented immigrants or Muslims, an attempt to crush the legal marijuana industry would likely have political consequences for a Republican administration.

If Sessions doesn’t realize it already, he’ll soon learn that gutting the REC and MED industry would require opposing state Legislatures in Ohio, Pennsylvania and elsewhere, and going against the will of voters in states including Florida, Arkansas, Nevada, Colorado, Montana and North Dakota. It would mean killing tens of thousands of jobs, and perhaps prosecuting White, media-savvy, cannabis executives, who can afford good lawyers.

Trump did not make a return to prohibition central to his campaign — his support for MED has beenrelatively consistent – and for a president who wants to win re-election, it’s hard to see much if any upside for him in a widespread crackdown. Given these uncertainties, there is a case for the industry to keep its head-down and hope President Trump has other priorities.

There is also a case for action.

In important respects, the marijuana industry is a marginalized community. But unlike other marginalized groups, marijuana is also a thriving industry, one expected to generate more than $6 billion in revenue this year.

During the Obama years, the marijuana industry has obtained the resources and geographic scope to make the Sessions confirmation a fiercely contested battle, and perhaps even defeat him. To do so, Republican Senators, especially those from legal states, need to understand that a vote for Sessions will cast a long shadow over their political futures.

For more than two years, cannabis executives have been telling me that this industry isn’t just about getting high and getting rich, that it’s rooted in struggles for health and justice. The Sessions nomination is the test of that commitment. If industry leaders don’t fight when other groups –including those that include colleagues, friends and customers — appear far more vulnerable, it’s hard to see how this industry stands for anything except its own enrichment. If the industry doesn’t fight now, who will stand up for it if political realities shift and legal cannabis emerges as a primary target?

The cannabis industry is indebted to countless Americans whose lives have been ruined by the war on drugs. Honoring their sacrifice demands a full-throated, and generously-funded, campaign against the Sessions nomination.

U.S. Navy images.

Washington D.C. elected officials have decriminalized up to an ounce of cannabis in our nation’s capitol, though the law still needs approval from the U.S. Congress before it is official.
Mayor Vincent Gray signed the measure last night, making the possession an ounce or less a civil offense punishable by a $25 fine at most. Smoking ganja in public remains illegal, and you can still be jailed for up to two months for lighting up a spliff anywhere other than the safety and privacy of someone’s home. Marijuana possession does remain illegal on federal property in the city, however (which is practically everywhere).

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