Up in Smoke
There are bad ideas. And then there's reparations for the drug war, an offensive idea that defies logic
For years there have been discussions about reparation to African-Americans for the evils of slavery. One of the many compelling arguments against this idea is the fact that there are no living people who were actually slaves, nor are there living people who actually owned slaves. It’s hard to justify a wealth transfer from one group to another when neither group was directly involved. But I am willing to accept the idea that reasonable people can disagree on the issue, even if I think it’s a terrible idea.
Then there are arguments that don’t make any sense. Like this one:
As Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle (LBS) pursues a local ordinance through the Baltimore City Council that is compliant with HB 837 – which passed the Maryland State Legislature during the 2022 legislative session – we will be working with the City Council to craft an ordinance that lives up to the legacy of reparations advocacy. While the focus is on reparations for the war on drugs – given the connection to cannabis legalization that will likely happen next year – this is one effort among many other important endeavors to advance Black people’s ability to function in this society as a sovereign and empowered community.
Every county in Maryland will eventually have to pass an ordinance that will determine how they spend their portion of the Community Repair and Reinvestment Fund created by HB 837. We hope that other counties throughout the state will use this same frame of reference when they are crafting their legislation. This is regarding the allocation of the resources from its portion of the Community Repair and Reinvestment Fund, which will be funded by tax revenues – not less than 30 percent of the total revenues – from the sale of recreational cannabis.
Some ideas just start from a bad premise and get worse from there. Here, the bad premise is that weed should be legalized. As has been written and said time and again, it should not be. A Constitutional Amendment is on the ballot this year (“Question 4”) that would legalize it. It will likely pass, even though that’s insane.
But let’s get past this for a second. Let’s assume that you believe that marijuana should be legal. Let’s also assume for a second that the Community Repair and Reinvestment Fund created by HB837 should also exist.1
Let’s take a look at the text and how the Fund is empowered to spend money
THE FUND MAY BE USED ONLY FOR:
1. FUNDING COMMUNITY–BASED INITIATIVES INTENDED TO BENEFIT LOW–INCOME COMMUNITIES;
2. FUNDING COMMUNITY–BASED INITIATIVES THAT SERVE COMMUNITIES DISPROPORTIONATELY HARMED BY THE CANNABIS PROHIBITION AND ENFORCEMENT; AND
3. ANY RELATED ADMINISTRATIVE EXPENSES
So the Fund may only be used for community-based initiatives. But the author of the piece Dayvon Love and the Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle believes that Baltimore City and the 23 counties should all pass legislation to authorize direct reparations to African-American residents.
This idea makes a lot of unfortunate assumptions, the most obvious is that reparations are legal under state law when it isn’t. But it goes beyond that.
The most offensive is the soft bigotry of low expectations. Love expects that African-Americans should be expected to have used marijuana in the past and should be compensated for it having been illegal for so long. This is merely a reinforcement of the soft bigotry of low expectations of the African-American community. Not everybody uses illicit substances regardless of their race. It is usually an argument that white Democrats employ.
There is also an assumption that only the African-American community has been impacted by the drug war. Much in the same way that not everybody uses illicit substances regardless of their race, not every user of illicit substances is of the same race. People of all races and ethnicities have been “victims” of the drug war. So why should one particular group be singled out to receive a benefit?
The other is the idea that there are “victims” of the drug war at all. Nobody forced anybody to break the law. The possession of weed is illegal under state law. It will still be illegal under federal law even if the Constitutional Amendment does pass. Nobody is holding a gun to anybody’s head making them buy weed, sell weed, or smoke weed.2 So why should a penny of taxpayer dollars be given to anybody who willingly and knowingly broke the law?
Under the logic that Love uses here, the state of Maryland should provide reparations to gun owners whose rights to carry a concealed weapon were illegally hindered all of these years by the state in violation of the Constitution.3,4
Nobody should be getting handouts from the Government. Possession of marijuana should not be legalized. The Community Repair and Reinvestment Fund should not exist. And nobody should be compensated for having broken the law. This is common sense, and nobody should take the idea of “reparations for the drug war” seriously.
It shouldn’t. But that’s a different conversation.
Unless it’s addictive. And everybody keeps telling us it’s not, right? Right?
And arguably, they would have a more actionable case for them since their rights were actively violated