JUSTICE
How Marijuana Generates White Wealth and Drives Black Incarceration
A tale of two realities
The gold rush of the 1800s brought wealth and prosperity to many White Americans, but this fortune came at a steep cost — the lives of countless Indigenous people lost to illness and violence. This historical example is a stark reminder that the glimmer of wealth often masks the tarnished reality of privilege — how one group’s prosperity is often built upon the suffering of another. The growth of the marijuana industry in America mirrors this pattern.
Before President Richard Nixon declared a “war on drugs” and Nancy Reagan launched the “Just Say No” campaign, Harry Anslinger, a government official who served as the first Commissioner of the U.S. Treasury Department’s Federal Bureau of Narcotics, set the tone for America’s heavy-handed approach to sentencing citizens for low-level drug possession charges. The anti-marijuana movement culminated in the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, which made it illegal to buy, sell, or possess marijuana. Much like alcohol prohibition, the criminalization of marijuana had adverse societal impacts, but this time, the consequences were racially disparate. According to an ACLU report, “For decades, marijuana laws have been used to criminalize Black and Brown people, waste taxpayer money, and fuel the…
