Jeff Sessions' Crackdown on Marijuana - Is It Really All About Disenfranchising Minorities?

As previous posts have indicated, in my opinion, U.S. Attorney General Sessions is a foul individual. My view dates all the way back to the late 1970's when he and I were both members of the Mobile, Alabama legal community. Sessions has a long history of racism and, as noted previously, failed to prosecute KKK members who lynched a 19 year old young black man, Michael Donald, while I still lived in Mobile (a photo of Donald's body is here). Now, it seems that Sessions has come up with a new means to assault minority communities: crackdown on marijuana - even legal marijuana - to increase convictions that will often lead to felony convictions that will deprive individuals of their voting rights and make it difficult to ever have successful employment opportunities.  Similarly, Sessions cares nothing about youths ensnared by the often draconian marijuana laws (Virginia's laws are horrific thanks to the GOP control of the Virginia House of Delegates).  Sessions likewise ignores the research that negate his  or the fact that research hows that marijuana is not a serious health threat.  A piece in Salon looks at Sessions ugly agenda.  Here are excerpts:

Soon after his election, Donald Trump announced he would appoint Jeff Sessions as attorney general, sending a wave of panic through the world of activism around legalizing or decriminalizing marijuana. Sessions is an old-line drug warrior who opposes all state-level efforts to liberalize marijuana laws, and it was widely feared he would reverse Obama-era Department of Justice policies recommending that federal authorities not interfere with states that legalize marijuana.
In July, Sessions made his first tentative move toward cracking down on states that legalize pot, sending a letter to Washington state officials in which he expressed skepticism about marijuana legalization, repeatedly singling out the fear that such laws would lead to more pot smoking among minors.
If Sessions is legitimately concerned about high school kids and that’s not just a front for promoting laws that are disproportionately enforced on black people, then he probably shouldn’t worry so much. A new study published in the National Bureau of Economic Research suggests that the effects of liberalizing marijuana laws on the behavioral outcomes of minors are . . . well, nothing. At least nothing of significance. “Notably, many of the outcomes predicted by critics of liberalizations, such as increases in youth drug use and youth criminal behavior, have failed to materialize in the wake of marijuana liberalizations,” the report reads.
In fact, the researchers found the opposite: Marijuana liberalization was associated with “reduced marijuana, alcohol, and other drug use; reduced desirability of consuming these substances; and reduced access to these substances on school property.”
Marijuana legalization or decriminalization apparently doesn’t do much to change young people’s behavior. Getting arrested for possessing or selling marijuana, however, can have a massive impact on a person’s life.
“Arrests prohibit individuals from fully participating in society, inhibiting their ability to get a job, get a loan, go to college, or even have a place to live,” Kassandra Frederique, the New York State Director at the Drug Policy Alliance, argued in a recent study of New York City’s marijuana arrest rates.
This life disruption, in turn, helps reinforce serious racial disparities in our society. Black and white people smoke marijuana at the same rate, but black people are almost four times as likely to be arrested for it. Even after New York Mayor Bill de Blasio enacted policies that reduced marijuana arrest rates in the city, black and Latino people made up 85 percent of marijuana arrests, despite being only about half the population.
Criminalizing marijuana does little or nothing to reduce crime or improve youth outcomes, but it is highly effective at increasing racial disparities, criminalizing young people of color and derailing career opportunities for young Latinos and African-Americans. Sessions is widely perceived as hostile to civil rights and full equality for people of color, so it’s entirely possible that his interest in escalating marijuana crackdowns is not as innocent as he claims.
If Jeff Sessions does begin to roll back decades of progress on marijuana reform, he’s fighting against the political tide: A survey conducted earlier this year found that 57 percent of Americans believed pot should be legal (although only 40 percent of Republicans held that view). Furthermore, Sessions is pursuing this crusade for no good reason. There is simply no evidence that marijuana liberalization leads to bad outcomes for younger people, while the evidence that being arrested for marijuana causes bad outcomes is overwhelming. Of course, if Jeff Sessions is actively trying to send more people of color to prison on minor drug offenses and damage their future prospects, maybe he knows exactly what he’s doing.

Racist Virginia GOP Accuses Northam of Being a "Race Traitor"

The sad reality is that for going on twenty years, if not far longer, the Republican Party has been/is a political party that panders to and coddles white supremacists who constitute a critical piece of the GOP party base.  If one has any doubts, simply look at GOP efforts to disenfranchise minority voters, especially blacks, the mass incarceration of minorities, particularly though draconian marijuana laws, and the racist dog whistle messages that have been used election cycle after election cycle.  Now, after the invasion of Charlottesville by white supremacists and Neo-Nazis, the protection of Confederate monuments has become yet another pillar of the GOP agenda, all to maintain the loyalty of racists and white supremacists who are key to GOP election turnout. Now, the Virginia GOP has attached Democrat gubernatorial candidate Ralph Northam for being a being a "race traitor" and "betraying" his family's southern heritage.  The Daily Beast looks at this batshitery:

The Virginia Republican Party on Wednesday essentially deemed the state’s lieutenant governor and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ralph Northam a race traitor for his call to remove Confederate monuments.

“@RalphNortham has turned his back on his own family's heritage in demanding monument removal,” the party’s official Twitter account posted. “Shows @RalphNortham will do anything or say anything to try and be #VAGov - #Pathetic.”

Northam discovered earlier this year that his ancestors on Virginia’s Eastern Shore owned slaves. Several months later, he called for the relocation of Confederate statues to museums.

Northam is currently running for governor against Republican candidate Ed Gillespie. The party later deleted the tweets and released a classic non-apology via a third tweet: “Our previous tweets were interpreted in a way we never intended. We apologize and reiterate our denunciation of racism in all forms.”

As note in prior posts, like Northam, I have Confederate ancestors from New Orleans, some of whom likely owned one or more slaves, although no family records exist on the issue.  None of us is responsible for the actions of our ancestors.  What we are responsible for is how we treat others and recognize the common humanity of others and their equal right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  And, if we learn that our ancestors acted dishonorably or inhumanely, we are responsible to disavow their misdeeds.  Northam has done this and is an honorable man whom I have known for 10 years.

But back to the foulness of today's GOP, including the Virginia GOP and, by extension, many of the. Republicans in the Virginia General Assembly.  A piece in The Guardian looks at the manner in which the GOP does the bidding of white supremacists.  Here are a few excepts:

We should not commend Republican party elected officials who claim outrage on social media at Trump’s remarks, often without daring to mention his name. The phony claimed outrage becomes dangerous if it convinces anyone that there is a distinction between Trump’s abhorrent comments and the Republican Party agenda.

The lesson from Charlottesville is not how dangerous the neo-Nazis are. It is the unmasking of the Republican party leadership. In the wake of last weekend’s horror and tragedy, let us finally, finally rip off the veneer that Trump’s affinity for white supremacy is distinct from the Republican agenda of voter suppression, renewed mass incarceration and the expulsion of immigrants.

There is a direct link between Trump’s comments this week and those policies, so where is the outrage about the latter? Where are the Republican leaders denouncing voter suppression as racist, un-American and dangerous?

Words mean nothing if the Republican agenda doesn’t change. Governors and state legislatures were so quick to embrace people of color in order to avoid the impression, they too share Trump’s supreme affinity for the white race. But if they don’t stand up for them they are not indirectly, but directly enabling the agenda of those same racists that Republican members were so quick to condemn via Twitter.

Gerrymandering, strict voter ID laws, felon disenfranchisement are all aimed at one outcome: a voting class that is predominantly white, and in turn majority Republican.

The white supremacist chant of, “you will not replace us,” could easily and accurately be the slogan for these Republican politicians. Their policies will achieve the same racial outcome as Jim Crow – the disenfranchisement and marginalization of people of color.

Why So Many Black Women Are Dying of AIDS

In a recent VEER Magazine piece I criticized Virginia's idiotic marijuana laws that serve little purpose other than to make otherwise law abiding citizens into criminals, often sending them to prison and destroying their ability to ever secure quality jobs upon their released.  No segment of the population is hit harder by these laws than young black males who lack legal counsel and get convicted whereas whites with legal counsel either secure reduced sentences or have their sentences dropped after good behavior.  I've seen it happen sitting in court with clients with code violations, so those who deny this reality are living in a fantasy world or lying to themselves. The havoc wreaked on the black community is immense, not that most Republicans give a damn since many are racists themselves or pander to racists in the party base.  As an article in the New York Times indicates, there is another sinister and deadly outcome from such failed criminal justices policies: rampant HIV/AIDS among black women.  The article looks at the failure of criminal justice in this nation and the bigotry that is fueling the HIV/AIDS epidemic.  Unfortunately, the article fails to look at the homophobia of black churches that only worsens the problem by pushing black males to be "on the down low."  Here are article highlights:

[I]t is critical that we do not overlook the significant evidence showing that the end result of these practices — the mass incarceration of nonwhite men — may also be fueling an urgent public health crisis among some of the most disadvantaged members of our society.

Although African-Americans represent about 12 percent of the United States’ population, they account for roughly half of all new infections and deaths from H.I.V./AIDS. The H.I.V. infection rate among black women is 20 times higher than for white women . . . . “If H.I.V./AIDS were the leading cause of death of white women between the ages of 25 and 34, there would be an outraged outcry in this country.”

Because most gay men do not have female sexual partners and there are relatively low rates of infection among nonblack women, and because rates of injection drug use or unprotected sex among black women are no higher than for other groups, the rapid increase in H.I.V./AIDS cases among black women has been hard to account for. But several public health studies now suggest that because people tend to select sex partners from within their own communities, higher rates of H.I.V. among men who have been in prison may raise the risk of infection in their community.

A study conducted by two professors of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, determined that from 1970 to 2000, a period in which the incarceration rates for black men skyrocketed to roughly six times the rate for non-Hispanic white men, the H.I.V./AIDS infection rate for black women rose to 19 times the rate for non-Hispanic white women. Using various sources of data to investigate the connection between these developments, they concluded that “higher incarceration rates among black males explain the lion’s share of the black-white disparity in AIDS infection rates among both men and women.” 

[I]ncarceration is a risk factor for H.I.V. infection for the following reasons: There is a higher prevalence of H.I.V. among prison populations; there are higher than average rates of sexual assault and coercive sex among men in prison; inmates have little access to condoms; injectable drugs and tattooing are risk factors that also occur in prisons; and when people are released from prison they typically have inadequate access to health care and treatment because of unemployment and poverty.

These facts suggest that an important contributor to the H.I.V. crisis among black women may be hyper-incarceration.  . . . . Outside of prison, African-Americans have the same (or lower) rates of risky sex or drug use as other Americans. Explanations like these reinforce homophobic and racist “blame the victim” attitudes. They have also impeded disease reduction by wrongly identifying vectors of transmission.

There is an urgent need for new policy approaches. We should demand rigorous enforcement of the standards mandated by the 2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act in order to significantly reduce sexual assaults and coercive sexual practices inside our prisons. We also need to insist that condoms be distributed inside all prisons, and that incarcerated individuals have access to H.I.V. testing and treatment before and after their release. Finally, we must continue to work to eliminate racial profiling in our criminal justice system, and significantly reduce incarceration rates by revising laws and punishment practices that unnecessarily send so many nonviolent lawbreakers to prison.

For those with their heads in the sand, HIV/AIDS in the black community is a huge problem in the  Hampton Roads area.  Pretending that the problem does not exist or ignoring the factor that Virginia's failed criminal justice system is playing in exacerbating the problem is idiocy and/or out right bigotry..