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The huge failure we know as the “war on drugs” is back in full force under the Trump administration, thanks in no small part to Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s retrograde tough-on-crime approach to drugs. It’s not hard to understand why someone like Sessions, with a history of racism, would love the war on drugs: In reality, it was always a war on a very particular set of people — and you can probably guess who those people are. And yet despite Sessions’s best efforts, there’s been a lot of progress on legalizing marijuana; opinions are changing and, in a lot of places, so are laws. we know as the “war on drugs” is back in full force under the Trump administration, thanks in no small part to Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s retrograde tough-on-crime approach to drugs. It’s not hard to understand why someone like Sessions, with a history of racism, would love the war on drugs: In reality, it was always a war on a very particular set of people — and you can probably guess who those people are. And yet despite Sessions’s best efforts, there’s been a lot of progress on legalizing marijuana; opinions are changing and, in a lot of places, so are laws. At the intersection of these pushes to legalize weed and the so-called war on drugs, there are a bevy of major scandals unfolding, all of which are ravaging communities of color. And here’s the thing about these scandals: They can’t simply be blamed on President Donald Trump and his team. Instead, they’re deeply rooted in a bipartisan type of anti-blackness. First, the lay of the land: Eight states and Washington, D.C., have now legalized recreational marijuana. Another 14 states have decriminalized recreational marijuana use, meaning you still can’t legally buy weed, but if you are caught with very small portions of it, you are supposed to either get a pass or a citation. Twenty-nine states have now legalized varying forms of medical marijuana. All of this talk of legalization and decriminalization gave me the wrong impression: I had thought that we were working toward ending the war on drugs. But arrests and imprisonment for marijuana possession are still in full effect — even in places where it has been legalized or decriminalized. How did this happen?

In 2016, more people were arrested for simple marijuana possession in the United States than all violent crimes combined.

In 2016, more people were arrested for simple marijuana possession in the United States than all violent crimes combined. More than one person is arrested every minute for marijuana possession in this country. An astounding 574,641 people were arrested for simple marijuana possession in the U.S. in 2016 — that’s 89 percent of all marijuana-related arrests. These aren’t dealers, distributors, or kingpins. They are just everyday people with a little bit of weed. The continuing arrests are part of a long pattern. From 2000 to 2010, an astounding 7,216,000 arrests were made in the U.S. for simple marijuana possession. How many lives were ruined as a result? How many people lost their jobs? Their right to vote? How many of those people lost their college financial aid? How many were jailed or sent to prison? How many of those people were moms or dads that were ripped away from their families? What we do know is that they were black. In spite of countless studies showing that African-Americans and white people use marijuana at almost the exact same rate, African-Americans are 375 percent more likely to be arrested for it. In fact, if as few people of color were incarcerated as white people, America’s prison population would plummet by 40 percent. Can anyone really believe this disparity is accidental? It’s not — that’s why it happens from coast to coast. America’s criminal justice policies — and their selective racial enforcement — are deeply rooted in racism and systemic white supremacy. This conclusion, thanks to Michelle Alexander’s book “The New Jim Crow” and Ava DuVernay’s documentary “13th,” is more widely accepted than it’s ever been, but the scandal continues. And isn’t a partisan one.

Police are viewed in an area which has witnessed an explosion in the use of K2 or “spice,” a synthetic marijuana drug, in East Harlem on Sept. 16, 2015 in New York. Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Take New York City , where I live. The city’s leaders have openly bragged about the decriminalization of marijuana, but arrests for simple possession actually went up by 9 percent from 2015 to 2016, with 18,136 people arrested. In a 2016 interview, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said, “We stopped the arrest for low-level marijuana possession.” But that’s simply not true: 96 percent of those arrested in New York were busted for low-level possession. Over 50 people a day are still being arrested for it in New York City alone. Most of those arrests, predictably, are happening in communities of color. The new numbers for New York City’s 2017 marijuana arrests just came out and they hardly budged — arrests declined by about 1 percent, disappointing many advocates and attorneys who took the mayor’s word on this issue. Democrats dominate in New York. In addition to its liberal mayor, 47 of 51 city council members are Democrats. New York can’t blame arresting 50 people a day for low-level marijuana possession on Sessions or Trump.

New York can’t blame arresting 50 people a day for low-level marijuana possession on Jeff Sessions or Donald Trump.