Advocates are pressing for a bill that would remove marijuana odor as the basis for reasonable suspicion for a police investigation. Stock.adobe.com photo by Alixandria Chen.
By Yanet Amanuel and Dana Vickers Shelley
The writers are public policy director and executive director, respectively, of the ACLU of Maryland.
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“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and Black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” — John Ehrlichman, Nixon’s former aide.
Read more on the original article : https://www.marylandmatters.org/2023/03/15/commentary-the-smell-of-marijuana-and-the-stain-of-racism/