Congressman Steve Cohen (D-TN) called on the U.S. House floor for an end to the 40-year war on drugs, which Cohen said had spent trillions of dollars to incarcerate millions of people for non-violent crimes.
Cohen introduced the Justice Integrity Act to the House in May. The legislation would create an advisory group to investigate racial and ethnic disparities in the criminal justice system.
“Marijuana use has not skyrocketed in the last year, but arrests are vamped up and they use arrest as a basis to get people, particularly people of color where it’s 7 times more likely you’ll be arrested if you’re African American and 4 times more likely you’ll be arrested if you’re Latino and more likely if you’re African American or Latino that you’ll spend a night in jail than if you’re Caucasian,” he noted.
(Source: RawStory.com)
