Black Lives Matter Organizers Call for Marijuana Decriminalization

By Tom Angell

Activists leading the fight to stop the killing of African Americans by police officers unveiled a series of policy proposals on Friday aimed at converting the attention the Black Lives Matter movement has generated into fundamental reforms that could transform the way law enforcement interacts with the communities it is charged with serving and protecting.

Included among the recommendations from the new effort, Campaign ZERO, is the federal and state decriminalization of marijuana. Specifically, the group is endorsing a bill in Congress, the Respect State Marijuana Laws Act of 2015. The legislation, sponsored by California Republican Dana Rohrabacher, would amend the Controlled Substances Act so that its penalties wouldn’t apply to anyone acting in accordance with state marijuana laws.

The recommendation, under the site’s section on ending “Broken Windows” policing, is displayed alongside a cannabis leaf icon:

The campaign’s slightly more detailed Federal Policy Agenda urges Congress to “pass legislation…to end federal marijuana prohibition or end DEA enforcement of this prohibition.” The group also wants states and municipalities to change marijuana policies and deprioritize enforcement of existing laws against the use of cannabis.

The new criminal justice reform push, launched by prominent Black Lives Matter activists Samuel Sinyangwe, Brittany Packnett, DeRay McKesson and Johnetta Elzie, is intended to provide concrete policy changes that the activists believe will reduce the number of police encounters that turn deadly.

Beyond the marijuana reform recommendations, proposals on the site include the expanded use of police body cameras, ending the use of asset forfeiture against people who haven’t been convicted of crimes and restricting the use of military-style equipment by local police departments.

According to data compiled by the activists, more than 1,000 people are killed by police in the U.S. every year, and so far there have only been nine individual days in 2015 on which there were no reported incidents of a law enforcement officer killing someone.

A series of police killings of unarmed black men — Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Walter Scott, to name a few — has brought the issue of racial justice to the forefront of American political discourse, forcing some presidential candidates to stake out pro-reform positions. Campaign ZERO hopes that the new effort will encourage the candidates to sign on to specific proposals such as the ones listed on the new site.