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Friday, May 2, 2008

This Week on Drugs

posted by on May 2 at 15:51 PM

nyc_pot_arrests.jpg

New York City: Racial bias in skyrocketing pot arrests.

A study released Tuesday reported that between 1998 and 2007, the police arrested 374,900 people whose most serious crime was the lowest-level misdemeanor marijuana offense.

That is more than eight times the number of arrests on those same charges between 1988 and 1997, when 45,300 people were picked up for having a small amount of pot.

Nearly everyone involved in this wave of marijuana arrests is male: 90 percent were men, although national studies show that men and women use pot in roughly equal rates. And 83 percent of those charged in these cases were black or Latino, according to the study. Blacks accounted for 52 percent of the arrests, twice their share of the city’s population. Whites, who are about 35 percent of the population, were only 15 percent of those charged — even though federal surveys show that whites are more likely than blacks or Latinos to use pot.

South Korea: Six teachers busted getting high.

Which employers aren’t drug testing? These ones.

Alcohol Impact Areas: Meaningless.

Thrifty Consumers: Cutting back on Starbucks.

One Down, An Infinite Number To Go: Colombia kills kingpin.

Probed: Wachovia for drug-money laundering.

Rerouted: Cocaine to Europe.

Detained: Child placed in state custody after father accidentally gives him hard lemonade at baseball game.

The 47-year-old academic says he wasn’t even aware alcoholic lemonade existed when he and Leo stopped at a concession stand on the way to their seats in Section 114.

“I’d never drunk it, never purchased it, never heard of it,” Ratte of Ann Arbor told me sheepishly last week. “And it’s certainly not what I expected when I ordered a lemonade for my 7-year-old.”

But it wasn’t until the top of the ninth inning that a Comerica Park security guard noticed the bottle in young Leo’s hand. “You know this is an alcoholic beverage?” the guard asked the professor.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Ratte replied. He asked for the bottle, but the security guard snatched it before Ratte could examine the label.

The Comerica cop estimated that Leo had drunk about 12 ounces of the hard lemonade, which is 5% alcohol. But an ER resident who drew Leo’s blood less than 90 minutes after he and his father were escorted from their seats detected no trace of alcohol. But it would be two days before the state of Michigan allowed Ratte’s wife, U-M architecture professor Claire Zimmerman, to take their son home, and nearly a week before Ratte was permitted to move back into his own house.

RSS icon Comments

1

Maybe whites are more likely to smoke at home, and blacks are more likely to smoke in, say, a Metro bus shelter at 8:30am.

Ok, that's probably bullshit, but if there is racial bias, isn't there an even more noticeable gender bias? I actually do think guys are more like to smoke in stupid, risky situations.

Posted by w7ngman | May 2, 2008 4:18 PM
2

that hard lemonade story is horrifying.

Posted by infrequent | May 2, 2008 4:24 PM
3

Hey Dominic,

How's your Spanish? According to this article, the European Parliment is proposing legalizing some forms of use of the coca leaf (such as in tea, or in energy bars for mountain climbers). I'm sure this is reported in English somewhere...

http://www.clarin.com/diario/2008/04/27/elmundo/i-02501.htm

Posted by Emily G | May 2, 2008 4:43 PM
4

Yeah, what kind of "academic" doesn't know about hard lemonade?

Posted by w7ngman | May 2, 2008 4:44 PM
5

It's very hard to tell from the graph showing pot arrests how the percentage has changed, since the earlier one doesn't have numbers. Visually, it looks like the approximate percentage of Blacks arrested has *decreased*, although the number of total arrests overall has obviously increased.

Posted by Thomas | May 2, 2008 4:56 PM
6

i know. if he's so "smart" and "academic" you'd think he could have outwitted that rent-a-cop. maybe by putting the bottle in a paper bag. that seems to fool even the most seasoned veterans on the force.

Posted by infrequent | May 2, 2008 5:47 PM
7

When I was in recovery (I'm recovered! Now I can drink) I almost bought a Hard Lemonade at a pizza joint in the U District before my friend stopped me. This guy got arrested for lack of brand awareness, essentially, which probably means he is a better parent and a deeper human being than most.

Posted by Grant Cogswell | May 2, 2008 6:01 PM
8

Well, if you really want to get on your high horse, you could write about the guy in Denver who got busted with .44 grams of pot (NOT a typo), despite the fact that we decrimanalized possession of less than an ounce in 1995. No link, but try rockymountainnews.com, which is where I read it this morning.

Posted by Fifty-Two-Eighty | May 2, 2008 6:45 PM
9

OK, decriminalized, so sue me.

Posted by Fifty-Two-Eighty | May 2, 2008 6:47 PM
10

@7, apparently you missed the (true) story of the dad at a Detroit Tigers game this week who bought his 7-year-old son some lemonade. Yup, you guessed it, Mike's Hard Lemonade. True story.

Posted by Fifty-Two-Eighty | May 2, 2008 6:53 PM
11

Errr... *looks askance at Fifty-Two-Eighty*

Posted by leek | May 2, 2008 7:04 PM
12

i'm sorry, this graph DOES NOT show racial bias.

it shows approximately the same PERCENTAGE of arrests by race. however, the number of arrests has exponentially increased.

Posted by holz | May 2, 2008 7:19 PM
13

I had to read the whole article on the hard lemonade professor but YES he is a heterosexual with a WIFE. I knew it! That type cannot be trusted to have kids. Every kid deserves a mother and father who doesn't accidentally buy him booze.

Posted by Bob | May 2, 2008 7:28 PM
14

I have to echo the sentiments of @1. This does seem to be a gender bias issue. Where's the outrage?

On the other hand, the overall jump in arrest rates is outrageous enough without having to find an *ism to go along with it.

Posted by Big Adventure Steve | May 2, 2008 7:36 PM
15

Sorry. Or maybe not. Am mostly drunk, but am home and no more armed to the teeth than usual. Which is to say a lot. But no worries, time to crash now.

Posted by Fifty-Two-Eighty | May 2, 2008 7:46 PM
16

what an irrelevant and useless waste of space (your yapping about this, that is).
i don't do drugs.
anybody who does drugs should be punished.
severely.
regardless of ethnicity, religious belief, political association, height, weight, hair color, brand of underwear, middle initial, etc.

Posted by criminator | May 2, 2008 10:44 PM
17

@16:

How was that cup of coffee you had this morning?

Have any beers this afternoon?

What about the Aspirin/Ibuprofen/Acetominofen you took for that "sore neck" last week?

Do you take any: sleep aids, high blood-pressure meds, Insulin, Viagra, anti-diuretics, cough medicines, etc.?

Drugs are everywhere - it's just that the people who make a lot of money from the drugs they manufacture would prefer that you continue to pay for their products - and presumably ignore the myriad of side-effects they cause - rather than to consume plant-based medicinals that anyone with even a modest ability could grow FOR FREE in their own back-yard.

Probably not as potent, but then, you usually don't have to worry about "anal leakage" or liver damage either.

Posted by COMTE | May 3, 2008 11:07 PM
18

@17:

Don't feed trolls. It just encourages them.

Posted by Breklor | May 5, 2008 2:09 PM

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