Ghiz and the anti-marijuana ordinance

Last week, Leslie Ghiz posted this item about the Draconian marijuana ordinance she supported. Someone asked if she would have the "spine" to repeal the ordinance. (I have vowed to work toward in conjunction with Vice Mayor Crowley and Councilmember Qualls to do exactly that. Commissioner Portune has reported that judges have told him this ordinance is a "major cause of overcrowding in the jails," and he also opposes this ordinance!)

Ghiz quotes a bunch of numbers out of context to scare voters into thinking this law does anyone any good.

In approximately the first year of this law, 577 whites were arrested and 3,644 blacks were arrested. It is likely that biased number has only increased in the past few months. Ghiz says the law targets not recreational smokers, but dealers. Can we really believe that all these thousands upon thousands of people were dealers? (By the way, selling marijuana was already a crime!)

And what about the guns confiscated? The number represents less than 2% of those arrested. What about the other 98%, who now have enhanced criminal records because of Cincinnati's over-criminalization? In Cincinnati, possession is a greater crime than the rest of the State of Ohio. With these permanent marks on their record, these 98% now face challenges in terms of housing, employment, and educational scholarship opportunities.

Combine that with not only the racially-biased manner with which this law is enforced, and we have a real problem.

Some studies have suggested that at-risk urban adolescent males and young men are likely to carry illegal guns at a rate of 4% or above. That seems to indicate that the anti-marijuana ordinance actually targets a statistically LESS violent portion of the population!

We need to stop falling for this constant rhetoric of fear. Charlie Winburn says City Council is playing "Russian Roulette" with our lives. Todd Portune and Si Leis had a pro-jail press conferenc in the County building in front of large piles of scary-looking weapons. When asked about a marijuana law, Leslie Ghiz starts talking about cocaine, and heroin. What she does not mention is the portion of arrests generally that can lead to these same seizures.

And let's not forget -- smoking marijuana and dealing marijuana were already illegal before Cincinnati made it an even greater crime.

Under all this talk of crime, we lose sight of the people who live in this City and hope to make it home. Of course everyone wants to live in safety. But promoting a culture at City Council that threatens to cut services to the poor, while over-patrolling in poor neighborhoods, arresting more people for crimes of poverty (like homelessness) while we build bigger jails and make more laws -- all these things show that Cincinnati has inverted priorities.

We need to put people first. We need to focus on taking care of the least among us. We need to spend our energy improving general quality of life, not giving large handouts to big corporations, like a $30 million parking garage to Corporex paid for by raising everyone's taxes.

We need to take care of each other, not scare each other into an election year frenzy so professional politicians can secure another two years funded through hundreds of thousands of dollars of special interest money.