New York City Is Hell for Pot Smokers

By Paul Armentano, AlterNet. Posted March 31, 2007.

If you toke in the Big Apple, chances are you've had a run-in with one of New York's "finest." If you're African-American or Hispanic, chances are you and the NYPD are on a first-name basis.

That's the dope from a new study by investigators at the National Development Research Institute (NDRI) -- an independent New York City think-tank specializing in substance abuse issues.

The study, entitled "The race/ethnicity disparity in misdemeanor marijuana arrests in New York City," analyzes NYC marijuana arrest data from 1980 to 2006. Its authors pay particular attention to the startling number of defendants arrested for "possessing marijuana in the fifth degree" (aka smoking pot in public) -- a misdemeanor crime that city cops began enforcing en masse under former Mayor Rudy Giuliani's "Quality of Life" policing initiative. (Although the possession of less than 25 grams of pot is punishable under state law by a fine-only civil citation, New York Statute 221.10 defines the possession or use of marijuana "open to public view" as a criminal misdemeanor punishable by up five days in jail.) The study's findings, which appear in the spring 2007 edition of the journal Criminology and Public Policy, are a sobering reminder of how race and class largely determine who is impacted by the war on cannabis consumers.

Of the more than 395,000 defendants busted in New York City since 1980 for puffing or possessing pot in public, nearly 336,000 of them (85 percent) were either African-American or Hispanic. By contrast, African-Americans and Hispanics together comprise approximately half of the city's population. Of the years studied, the NYPD's racial crackdown was most egregious in 1994, when a whopping 91 percent of those arrested for public pot possession were black or Hispanic.

The unequal treatment of minorities for misdemeanor pot crimes is not just limited to arrests, the study finds. Investigators also report that African-Americans were 2.66 times as likely as whites to be detained in jail pending arraignment while Hispanics were nearly twice as likely. In addition, both groups were twice as likely as whites to receive a conviction -- and criminal record -- for public pot possession. Compared to Caucasians, African-Americans were four times as likely and Hispanics were three times as likely to receive jail time.

"This study ... document[s] that the burden of [public pot] arrests have been falling disproportionately on blacks and Hispanics and that members of these minority groups, on average, have been receiving harsher treatment [than whites] within the criminal justice system," its authors conclude.

The study is hardly the first to document such racial disparities in drug law enforcement. A 2005 NORML Foundation study by longtime High Times columnist Jon Gettman reported that although black adults account for fewer than 12 percent of all marijuana users, they comprise 23% those arrested annually on pot possession charges. A previous review of marijuana arrest data by Gettman in 2000 found that African-Americans are busted for marijuana possession at rates twice those of whites in 64 percent of US counties.

See more stories tagged with: discrimination, hispanic, african american, pot, new york city

Paul Armentano is the senior policy analyst for NORML and the NORML Foundation in Washington, DC. He may be contacted via e-mail at: paul@norml.org.