My mom tried pot last year — finally
Now Cory Booker can legalize that shit
It took years of discussion before my mom finally tried pot for the first time in her life. She was born in the 50s (though only kinda: ’59 — sorry, ma) so her attitude around that cheeba and getting high was generationally informed, less flexible than those of these reckless millennials.
She seemed genuinely surprised when I told her that I saw vastly more drug use at my private, very white, wealthy liberal arts college than growing up in Yakima County at the height of its meth-trafficking days. It was that revelation that convinced her to toke up, as they say.
It’s a also good reminder that we should never take for granted that white people do as many drugs than anyone else, that y’all are more likely to deal drugs and not see a minute of jail time, and that mandatory sentencing and the greater War on Drugs is racist.
Enter U.S. Senator Cory Booker (NJ-D), who recently introduced a bill that would legalize marijuana, finally allowing a sweet, sweet purple haze, in a conspiracy of free love, to settle across the country from sea to shining sea.
Several factors make it possible for only the ninth black US Senator ever to propose ending the greatest expression of racial discrimination in our criminal justice system.
Reforms at the state level, finally at a tipping point, have opened the door to a national debate. Recreational use of dope has been legal in Washington state since 2013, and today, any adult can legally buy and possess bud in seven states (including the entire west coast) and the District of Columbia.
This a net good thing — fewer people in jail, reductions in violent crime, greater tax revenue. The uneven campaign messaging and approach to implementation, however, has left a white supremacist-sized hole for the inequity baked into current law to persist (and in some cases, thrive).
Another component has flung the door to this conversation open even wider— white people on heroin. The opioid epidemic has only come to dominate so much of the national conversation because of the alarming rates at which it affects more white folks. The calls for criminal justice reform coming from conservatives stems from the opioid crisis hitting suburbia and small rural towns. They didn’t care about urban (read: black) use of heroin when they passed sentencing laws decades ago, but now that their donors’ kids are having pill parties, they feel compelled to revisit a system that prioritizes punitive measures over rehabilitative ones.
It’s impossible — in fact, it’s morally irresponsible — to separate the ganja legalization conversation from our nation’s legacy of criminalizing black and brown bodies, which itself is a legacy of Jim Crow — a holdover from America’s original sin: slavery. The implementation of misguided drug policy fell along racial lines and jailed a generation of black and brown folks. Righting that wrong demands that we unwind this coded history.
Which is what makes Sen. Booker’s proposal so interesting. His frames the issue as a racial justice bill with a component that decriminalizes reefer. It goes beyond just allowing me to walk down the street with a spliff tucked behind my ear and flexes it’s legislative muscle at the most fundamental expressions of racial discrimination in our country today. Two key components — expunging the records of felons charged with possession and incentivizing states to end racial disparities — signal a movement towards this kind of reparations.
We should take it further.
For every economic argument used to convince someone legalization is a good idea (looking at you, libertarian bro), there should be a policy that aims to make whole those whose lives were ruined by the War on Drugs. For example, non-violent felons convicted of intent to sell should receive priority in receiving retail licenses. Another example: devote 5% of all tax revenue collected from the sale of that chronic to housing and human services for those formerly convicted. If we were to use Washington state’s revenue as a floor to extrapolate from, we could project $16.1 billion in tax revenue and over $850 million in resources for the victims of a racist Drug War.
Call it an oopsie tax on our collective conscience; an indemnity for a system designed for— and wildly successful at— jailing black and brown folks.
My mom was surprised to learn that my high-flying college days were emblematic of the racial disparities in drug law enforcement. She didn’t know the sentencing disparities between crack cocaine and powder cocaine as she sat on the bathroom floor of her apartment, hesitant as my sister explained the mechanics of how to take a hit with two hands. As her mouth turned dry and her lips grew heavy, she barely registered the shift inside her. Smoke curled out of her mouth and out puffed generations of false moral assumptions.
That wasn’t so bad, she later told me. She did it because she wanted to know something more about her children — and maybe even a little more about her students. My kids aren’t so bad.
She laughed her way through Insidious, thinking it was a comedy. Bleary-eyed and giggly, a lighter in one hand and a cheap glass pipe in the other — this image of my mother is the one I think of when I think of cultural progress. It’s this exact loosening of generational mores that will pave a path for better drug policy going forward.
My mom would never get high again. Once was enough, she said. There were plenty of lessons in that, and she’s still unpacking them.
