2012 could be the actual beginning of the long expected Latino political awakening. Why? Perhaps sheer numbers, the reaction to the dire economic costs the community has endured, the evaporation of Latino family wealth in the housing bubble and great Mortgage scams, high unemployment and under-employment, continuously high drop out rates for high school completion of any ethnic group, the appallingly high prison population, and an alarming obesity and diabetes problem that plagues the community. All of these issues are maddening and worthy of action. Simply stated, the Latino community writ large is in crisis.

This crisis is further exacerbated by the anti-immigrant (now largely anti-Latino) social and political movement emerging throughout the country with such mean-spirited fury in Arizona, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina and many other locales signals a most distressing phenomena. The continued aggressive deportations have helped portray Latinos as a marginalized class of dark, uneducated, criminally menacing and generally undesirable people. Our discouraging lack of unity or even outrage is sadly absent amongst our fellow Hispanics. This general lack of passion suggests that a boiling point has not been reached. Hence, to expect an out-pouring of angry or concerned Latino citizenry at the polls is not in the cards.

This lack of cohesiveness readily explains President Obama’s tepid leadership on Latino issues. At times, the Democrats smack of a craven or pusillanimous approach. For instance, the Congressional Democrats, more specifically those in the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, have been reluctant to challenge the President on his record deportations that have separated American born children from their parents and have occasionally caught US citizens in the ICE dragnet. As for the GOP, it manifests irrational derailment (crack up) or plain madness. An example of this is how many Republicans refuse to address the immigration problem humanely, while ratcheting up the heated rhetoric that many Latinos find offensive. Additionally, the Republican approach to Latin American foreign policy is irrational, as evidenced by the recent failure to confirm Ambassador Aponte and the continued linking of Hugo Chavez to Iran. Neither party appears to feel the need to cater or attend to our disturbing issues. It is as if our 50 million + population does not matter and may be satisfied with only a handful of swing states: Florida the biggest prize, which empowers the Cuban Americans out of proportion and the smaller states like New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada give the Hispanics some electoral heft. Overall, the Latino vote in electoral terms is largely viewed as those reduced groups of prosperous or “assimilated” Hispanics.

Leadership is another conundrum. Who and where are the leaders the community sees as following them into a foxhole in the endeavor to improve the general welfare? The current GOP primary debate is at best disquieting. It feels like Latino immigrants are readily tossed together with terrorists, Islamic extremists, drug cartel minions, and folks who are stealing America’s jobs. Being the national scapegoats begins to describe us in these difficult times. Yet, we can publish success stories of our 100 most influential Latinos because they are real. But is this the real pulse of our overall condition? We certainly should extol and applaud our achievements but never forget our less fortunate.

Perhaps 2012 will be the beginning of a more complete discussion of the Latino community. It is indeed merited in the 2012 electoral discourse. However, if one waits for our current national political leadership or presidential pretenders to address the Latino agenda, the betting is it is going to be plainly unsatisfactory. The new year could still bring a dramatic change in the effect Latinos have on the national scene. The most probable scenario for the Latino community is that if they do turn out in historic numbers is: they will be divided….neither party will be able to claim  with certainty that the Latino vote is wholly theirs. If that is the case then Latinos could be up for grabs every national election thus becoming a significant swing vote.

“This mass incarceration, which harms families and communities, and the racial disparities, underscore the fact that major reforms are needed to change the way police operate in communities of color, and how people of color are treated by prosecutors, judges and juries.

One overlooked fact is that many African American and Latino defendants are poorer than white defendants and cannot afford attorneys that have the resources to properly defend them against better-resourced prosecutors.”

What are your thoughts? Should Latino civil rights organizations pay more attention to incarceration issues and the death penalty?

Barack Obama is trying my patience. Don’t get me wrong, I still believe he inherited a mess from George Bush and is doing the best he can to turn the ship of state around.  However allowing his Attorney General Eric Holder to come out against California’s Prop 19 is not only “not change”, it is an endorsement of the racist enforcement of our nation’s drug laws.

RACIAL INJUSTICE IN THE DRUG WAR

While roughly 12% Anglos and 11% of Blacks and Hispanics are consumers of illicit drugs, criminal justice statistics dramatically demonstrate an over-representation of Blacks and Hispanics arrested for the use of illicit drugs and in those who go to trial and who are ultimately sentenced to jail. It is no accident that Prop 19 is endorsed by the NAACP and California’s LULAC.  They are joined by LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition), SEIU ( Service Employees International Union), DPA (Drug Policy Alliance), NORML (National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws) who all say YES on Proposition 19.

CURRENT DRUG POLICY AN ABYSMAL FAILURE

In the almost 40 years since President Nixon declared a war on drugs, tens of millions of Americans have been arrested and hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent. Yet drugs are just as available now as they were then. And the impact has been felt most strongly amongst Hispanics, Blacks, and the poor.

There are many good reasons to support proposition 19.  The most obvious is because we have a failed drug policy. Cannabis has been illegal since 1911. Not only is cannabis still widely used and available, but our present failed drug policy is racist.  It’s costly.  It is undermining the Constitution.  It decreases respect for the police.  It fuels gangs and gang violence and U.S. drug policy is responsible for 8,000-20,000 deaths per year in Mexico.

MARIJUANA LAWS DEMONIZE AND TARGET MINORITIES

The NAACP and the LULAC of California both recognize how U.S. drug laws are used to marginalize discriminated against minorities. The adverse affects are detailed in Michelle Alexander’s new book, The New Jim Crow. In it, she points out that a drug conviction automatically makes a person a second-class citizen who can be legally discriminated against in housing and employment, denied school loans, and barred for life from serving on juries, accessing public benefits and even voting.

While African Americans make up only about 13 percent of the U.S. population and about 15 percent of drug users, they make up about 38 percent of those arrested for drug law violations and a mind-boggling 59 percent of those convicted for drug law violations. With Hispanics, the numbers are not quite as dramatic but are still appalling. We now have 7,000,000 Americans, one out of every thirty two American adults, incarcerated, on probation or on parole, and they are disproportionately young Hispanic and Black males.

The League of United Latin American Citizens of California (LULAC) endorsed Prop. 19.  State director Argentina Dávila-Luévano said, “The current prohibition laws are not working for Latinos, nor for society as a whole. Far too many of our brothers and sisters are getting caught in the cross-fire of gang wars here in California and the cartel wars south of our border,” she says. “It’s time to end prohibition, put violent, organized criminals out of business and bring marijuana under the control of the law.”

Historically, Mexican-Americans have been demonized by associating the Hispanic population with marijuana use. This effort becomes more intense in economic hard times. This trend started shortly after the Mexican Revolution in the early 20th century when large numbers of Mexican workers came across the border.

As the economy deteriorated, local prosecutors and editors publicly decried the “loco weed.” One critic associated marijuana (called “marihuana” at the time) — not only with Mexicans but “Negroes, prostitutes, pimps, and a criminal class of whites.” States began outlawing the drug, one Texas senator asserting “All Mexicans are crazy, and this stuff is what makes them crazy.”

Mexican-Americans were used as a whipping boy to generate anti-marijuana hysteria. In the 1930s Harry Anslinger, head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, led the propaganda campaign to make marijuana possession a federal crime. He was an avowed racist as evidenced by this quote about marijuana (which at the time was commonly known as  cannabis), “its effect on the degenerate races.” He was referring to “Mexicans, Negroes, Puerto Ricans, jazz musicians and other social undesirables,” as he described those he said used marijuana.

Anslinger quoted Floyd Baskett, the publisher of the Alamosa, Colorado newspaper (Alamosa is 18 miles from my wife’s hometown by the way), who wrote “I wish I could show you what a small marijuana cigarette can do to one of our degenerate Spanish-speaking residents. That’s why our problem is so great; the greatest percentage of our population is composed of Spanish-speaking persons, most of who are low mentality, because of social and racial conditions.”

A decade earlier earlier in 1927, a Montana state legislator was quoted in the Butte Montana Standard, “When some beet field peon takes a few traces of this stuff…he thinks he’ has just been elected President of Mexico, so he starts to execute all his political enemies.”

The anti-Mexican, anti-Hispanic rhetoric continues to this day.  Voting YES on Proposition 19 will be another big step to defeating this kind of racism. Right now among California’s likely voters, 63% of Latinos are likely supporters of Prop 19. The recent support of the California LULAC and a brief refresher on the odious history of marijuana prohibition should  be enough to continue that momentum toward cannabis decriminalization.

CURRENT DRUG LAWS ARE GOOD FOR CRIMINALS AND BAD FOR LAW ABIDING PEOPLE

Just as alcohol prohibition did, marijuana prohibition is enriching organized crime. Instead of regulating marijuana to control who can access it, policymakers have ceded control of the $400-billion-a-year global drug market to crime syndicates and thugs.

In Mexico, parts of the country are like Chicago on steroids under Al Capone. 28,000 people have died from drug war violence since President Calderon launched a war three years ago against well-armed, well-funded drug trafficking organizations. The U.S. government doesn’t report its prohibition-related deaths, but law enforcement officers, drug offenders and civilians die every day in our country’s war on drugs too.

OUR LEADERS USE MARIJUANA WITHOUT LEGAL CONSEQUENCES

Use of marijuana or other illegal drugs is rampant amongst our elected officials, yet few suffer any adverse legal or social consequences. President Obama used drugs. Former President George W. Bush was an admitted alcoholic and credible rumors say he regularly used cocaine.  Then there’s Bill Clinton, who famously said he smoked pot but didn’t inhale. Al Gore, Newt Gingrich, New York’s Mayor Bloomberg, former and current governors Jesse Ventura (I-MN),Gary Johnson (R-NM), Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA), and Sarah Palin (R-AK) all admit that they consumed cannabis.

CURRENT DRUG LAW CAUSES LOTS OF PROBLEMS

The war on drugs hasn’t just failed; it’s created problems of its own. The drug war is a good way to waste money. It has cost billions. In the last 30 years in California, we’ve built 22 new prisons and 4 new colleges.   20-30% of third strikes are for minor drug violations and taxpayers spend $40,000/year to incarcerate these folks.  Laws restricting the availability of sterile syringes have increased the spread of AIDS and hepatitis C.  The war on drugs, or more accurately the people who use drugs we’ve demonized, has weakened the 1^st, 4^th, 5^th, 9^th and 10^th Amendments of the Constitution.

WATCH OUT FOR THE BOOGEYMAN

The opposition is grasping at straws.  A recent article in L.A. Times was about a presumed marijuana addict, whatever that is. She spent $5,000/year on cannabis. At current rate of roughly $400/ounce, that is slightly more than an ounce/month, or one .9 gm joint per day.  This is just 10% of the amount of marijuana that the federal government provides to a person on the federal IND program. Most likely this person was self-medicating for her anxiety.

Another boogeyman of the Prohibitionists is that legalizing marijuana will increase use amongst teens. Most likely, the passage of Prop 19 will decrease the number of teens using it. Compare Holland 13% to the U.S. 19%. The Dutch Minister of Health stated “We have succeeded in making pot boring.” When Prop 215 was on the ballot, the prohibitionists said pot use would go up. It hasn’t. It has gone down.

BENEFITS OF YES ON 19

Legalization would be beneficial in key aspects of the war on terror. Afghanistan is the world leader in opium production, and this trade is highly lucrative because U.S.-led prohibition drives the market underground. The Taliban then earns substantial income by protecting opium farmers and traffickers from law enforcement in exchange for a share of the profits.  U.S. eradication of opium fields also drives the hearts and minds of Afghan farmers away from the U.S. and toward the Taliban.

Legalization could also aid the war on terror by freeing immigration and other border control resources to target terrorists and WMDs rather than the illegal drug trade. Under prohibition, moreover, terrorists piggyback on the smuggling networks established by drug lords and more easily hide in a sea of underground, cross-border trafficking.

We’ve heard cannabis is dangerous. Yet experts say it’s less harmful than coffee.  Henningfield & Benowitz compared 6 commonly used recreational drugs – alcohol, tobacco, heroin, cocaine, coffee and cannabis. Which one was the least harmful? Cannabis. Even so there are some who do develop a dependency on marijuana. Legalizing cannabis would aid in treatment. Jail is not treatment. Prop 19 encourages those also might need help to get it legally.

We have heard that passage of Prop 19 will increase the number of users.  This seems unlikely because of the  current ease in acquiring marijuana.  Illicit sales are encouraged because of the money to be made on the black market. The alcohol model of tax regulate would make cannabis harder to obtain.  The late conservative pundit William F. Buckley, founder of the National Review and for 33 years moderator of public television’s Firing Line, said it was easier for an eighth grader to get marijuana than alcohol. Why? Because alcohol is taxed and regulated and marijuana is not. The liquor store owner has an investment to protect, the illicit seller of marijuana does not.

We have examples in Portugal and Holland of what happens when you legalize drugs. Not much except there is less crime, less fear of the police, less money wasted and a reordering of police priorities. As the attorney who fought the case that legalized marijuana in Alaska in 1982 said after a 5-2 vote of the Alaskan Supreme Court ruling that the Alaska Constitution protected the private use of marijuana: “Do you know what happened the next morning?  The sun came up and life went on.”

It is time for life to go on in California. Vote YES on PROPOSITION 19!

David Bearman, M.D. is the Vice President of the American Academy of Cannabinoid Medicine and author of Demons, Discrimination and Dollars: A Brief History Of The Origins of American Drug Policy.

Webmaster’s note: There seems to be a rift between the Washington, D.C. LULAC and the California LULAC mentioned in this blog post. Please read this for more clarification.

My observation is: this sort of distressing report can only help to solidify an increasing perception that the Latinos who make up well over 65% of the undocumented or illegal foreign population in the US are a class of scofflaws. This is most disturbing. The report additionally becomes somewhat confusing when it suggests and states that a good number have been incarcerated for violating immigration law. The convictions broke down largely along citizenship lines. Among sentenced non-citizen Latino immigration offenders, more than eight-in-ten (81%) were convicted of entering unlawfully or residing in the U.S. without authorization. In contrast, more than nine-in-ten (91%) U.S. citizen Latino immigration offenders were convicted of smuggling, transporting or harboring an unlawful alien. Hispanics who were convicted of any federal offense were more likely than non-Hispanics to be sentenced to prison. If the Homeland Security Department has decreed that every illegal entering the US will be not only detained but convicted of a felony to serve time, this is truly an abuse of immigration law.

Ted Alden, former London Financial Times correspondent in Washington, recently wrote a book, The Closing of the American Border. Alden concludes in his book that after 9/11, the Justice Department developed the Patriot Act to control and monitor the American public. This Act appears to have added to the body of law in dealing with subversion or sedition. In terms of dealing with foreigners or non-US citizens or non-US residents, the existing immigration legal framework was instrumental to protect the US from any terrorist or similar threats. Hence, the draconian process in the application of issuing visas (no longer just trying to prevent economic refugees from entering the US, but real threats like terrorists), arduous port of entry immigration inspections, closer customs monitoring of cargo containers, advanced passenger inventory lists for aircraft scheduled to fly to the US and the Passenger Name Registration on aircraft in flight to the US. The publication of ‘no-fly lists’ (contain the names of suspected or known terrorists) created increased vigilance. But if you had the misfortune to have the same name as someone on the list or near the same name as crossed checked with the Advance Passenger and Passenger name lists, you are automatically denied access to the aircraft. These lists can further complicate travel into the US. This has made it imperative for governments to improve travel documentation such as internationally agreeing to include digital photos, special paper, digital fingerprints or iris scan or voice recognition chips.

It should be noted that out of over six billion people on the planet, over two billion have no real authentic documentation. That means that no birth certificates, baptismal notices, drivers licenses, passports or national ID cards are held by these individuals. Alden basically describes how immigration law became the preferred instrument to prevent, root out or capture any suspected terrorist or threat, but the importance of this determination to use the anti-terrorist cry to go after any undesirable quickly became apparent. Obtaining legal entry into the US is a monumental effort for most foreigners, subjected to high cost of visa applications, then comes the almost insulting if not contemptuous ordeal by the interviewing official at the US consulates. And then if you get the visa, there is no guarantee that the port of entry inspector will agree to allow one to enter the US. Ultimately, these Homeland Security immigration inspectors have the final word.

It is interesting to note that about 40% or more of the so-called illegals in the US come in legally with a visa or permission of sorts. The other 55% came in illegally. In practical terms, the stereotypical image of the undocumented is someone in tatters jumping a fence, swimming a river, or hiding in the floor board of a vehicle. It would be interesting for the Pew researchers to distinguish those Latinos in jail as to how many entered illegally or entered legally and overstayed their visas and became illegal. I would guess that the poor, downtrodden illegal who paid a coyote to enter the US is the one being incarcerated. The better clothed and educated ‘overstayers’ probably do not see this treatment as often. 

Portraying the Latino population as a horde of lawless undesirables is most misleading if in fact this draconian application of immigration law is yielding this result. MALDEF, along with the Pew Hispanic Center, should seek a foundation grant to thoroughly address this situation. Of course, many historians will readily point out that on the eve of the Civil War in 1860, the prison population was approximately 80% Irish. It appears as one wanders through US social history that in the 1700s, the prison population was small and mostly Scots-Irish. Small because most jurisdictions had no resources to build and house prisoners. Hence, stealing a horse or twice convicted of a crime could result in a rope around your neck and publicly executed. In the 1800s, the Irish were the scofflaws, and in the 1900s the African-Americans became the leading presence in the federal prisons and local jails. Now it appears that the Latino community will soon be seen as the new avant-guard in populating prison facilities, and this may be another indication of the underclass the Latino community is about to become. It certainly is not the case yet and should not be, but reports like these are alarming and distressing, but should be managed in a way that gives us solutions to the problem and points the way forward. Again, this Pew Report is most disconcerting. Its findings are certainly of great concern. The overall conclusion is that Latinos tend to be the most numerous group violating immigration law. That is not only illegal entry but includes aiding and abetting illegal entry. This serves to re-enforce negative stereotypes. Our community needs to attend this situation to disabuse the notion that we are all not law abiding.

DiversityInc also published a blurb on this today referencing Bill Cosby. While I think that Bill Cosby’s criticisms of the black community are valid to a point, I am saddened that we don’t have a spokesperson or someone drawing attention to this with such furor in the Latino community. I do think that society’s lack of investment in schools and in after school and job training programs plays a big part in creating this tragedy, but we also have to look inward. I definitely think that there is a glorification of the “gangsta” or cholo lifestyle within our communities, and this is evidenced from the styles of clothing, choice of tattoos, music, etc. What do you think?