Race and Drugs: Minorities Not on the Legalization Bandwagon

Support of marijuana legalization by millennials is fractured by race, according to the Harvard Public Opinion Project’s spring poll.
Americans may see nationwide legalization as inevitable, but the poll reveals important differences in the way different racial groups experience drugs and drug policy. The latest national survey of American millennial youths confirms that Generation Y no longer opposes the legalization of marijuana.But can it be said that millennials truly support legalization? Forty-four percent of millennials surveyed support marijuana legalization, and 22 percent remain unsure.
Broken down across racial groups, minority millennials tend not to support legalization as much as their white peers. While 49 percent of white millennials favor legalization, 38 percent of African American and 37 percent of Hispanic American millennials hold the same view. Additionally, 27 percent of Hispanic respondents strongly oppose legalization, in contrast to the 21 percent of white respondents who hold the same view. Support for legalization breaks down significantly along racial lines. Discussion of race might be useful, therefore, in finding policy solutions to marijuana regulation.
Justice John Paul Stevens revealed his support for marijuana legalization this month, reinforcing a growing national sentiment—from working class Americans to the president himself—that cannabis is not the noxious substance we once considered it to be. As the federal government acquiesces to state initiatives to decriminalize and even permit marijuana usage, most Americans are beginning to envision a future of legal recreational pot usage. Justice Stevens, in explanation of his support for marijuana legalization, even added, “I really think that that’s another instance of public opinion [that’s] changed.” But how Americans view and experience drugs is a story far more nuanced than a turnaround from opposition to support, even amongst typically liberal demographics. Proponents of legalization who point to its popularity among young people may be relying more heavily on support by whites than they realize.
How does race change the way drugs are experienced in the United States? Although the statistics provide no definitive answer, the question is made more relevant by HPOP’s polling. In terms of usage, millennials of different races have smoked pot at similar rates, with white millennials reporting a slightly higher usage; 11 percent of whites, 8 percent of African Americans, and 10 percent of Hispanic Americans responded that they had used marijuana. Current usage is not vastly disparate, and looking forward towards usage under legalization offers no further answers either. Twenty-three percent of whites, 22 percent of African Americans, and 20 percent of Hispanic Americans reported that they would use marijuana if it were legalized for recreational use. By and large, millennials from socially disadvantaged minority groups use and would use marijuana at similar rates to white millennials.
Hispanic and African Americans experience marijuana in more ways than simply consumption. Indeed, the consequences of the drug trade and of marijuana abuse disproportionately affect minority populations. Marijuana possession arrests, for example, vary widely across racial groups. According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, African Americans are 3.73 times as likely as white Americans to be arrested for having marijuana. But the numbers are more extreme when “whites” are separated into Latinos and non-Latino whites, a distinction the FBI fails to make in its statistics. New York, one of two states that accounts for Latinos and whites separately, reports Latinos are arrested at four times the rate of whites for marijuana possession. The war on drugs may be an offensive against the drug trade on its face, but the effects of the campaign have distinctly racial biases. The consequences of marijuana usage have, as a result, taken a heavier toll on minorities than whites.
Yes, millennials support legalization at a higher rate than they oppose it. But within racial groups, the same can only be said about white millennials. African American and Hispanic American millennials, on the other hand, are nearly evenly divided about the issue. The illegal supply of cannabis disproportionally burdens minority communities, and the harms of substance abuse differ between racial groups as well. How legalization might diminish or exacerbate the disparate consequences of the marijuana trade on racial groups, however, remains yet to be seen.
 Mariel Klein contributed to the reporting of this article