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Leonard Pitts Jr. on Obama, Drug Legalization, and Racial Disparities

Pulitzer-winning author Leonard Pitts, Jr., has a piece in the Miami Herald, "If Not Drug Legalization, What, Mr. President?"

If President Obama had a son, he would look like Trayvon Martin. So the president famously said.

And the president’s son would thereby find himself at significantly greater risk of running afoul of the so-called “War on Drugs” than, say, a son of George W. Bush. Depending on what state he lived in, a Trayvon Obama might be 57 times more likely than a Trayvon Bush to be imprisoned on drug charges.

And not because blacks are committing most of the drug crime, which they're not, as Pitts demonstrates.

Nice way to start the weekend.

Permission to Reprint: This article is licensed under a modified Creative Commons Attribution license.
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If we were to apply the drug

If we were to apply the drug laws to rich white women the way we apply them to poor black men, drugs would become legal in less than six months. Literally.

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Addiction Affects Everyone

I agree with TrebleBass - drug abuse and addiction affect everyone - white and black, young and old.  There are people in every demographic getting addicted and struggling with the resultant problems.  It's unfortunate that the Drug War has become a race issue in addition to all of the other problems it causes.

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This

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