By Jon Schuppe - NBC News
The war on drugs knocked on Berneice Evans' door in February 1990.
She was a single mother ironing shirts at a dry cleaner when police officers knocked on the door of her apartment in Neptune, New Jersey.
They pointed a gun at their young daughters and elderly nanny, announced that they would search the place and asked to be told where Evans was, threatening to take the girls and put them in the custody of the state child protection agency.
Agents said they
had found more than one ounce of marijuana
[about 28 grams, or two handfuls].
They let the girls go with an older sister and arrested the babysitter.
When Evans turned himself in, she was taken into custody on charges of selling drugs and putting minors in danger.
Berneice Evans, right, with her daughter, Nafeesah Goldsmith, in 2017.Courtesy of Nafeesah Goldsmith
Evans, who earned about $ 200 a week from her job,
occasionally sold small bags of marijuana
, an extra way that she and others in her conditions in poverty-stricken neighborhoods sought to find what they needed to pay for the bills. accounts.
He also kept something to smoke.
She pleaded guilty and was sentenced to probation, a punishment that haunted her for years: it prevented her from accessing better-paying jobs, made it difficult for her to find decent housing, and made her younger daughters follow dark paths.
Evans' arrest and its aftermath, recounted by this woman and one of her daughters, are the kinds of stories that have fueled a movement that seeks to have authorities in states where marijuana has been legalized to
repair the damage caused by decades of arrests. , especially to racial minorities such as Latinos and blacks,
for issues related to this drug.
One of the solutions they propose is to channel what is collected through taxes towards social services, public health programs and economic development initiatives that can help people like Evans and his family.
Some activists define that as reparation for a form of racial oppression.
These are the cases of Latinos who have been marked by racial discrimination in the United States
June 9, 202001: 24
The debate on this issue has raged in New Jersey, where on November 3 the legalization of marijuana for recreational use was approved in a referendum.
State lawmakers have
until January 1 to pass a law that defines how the new marijuana industry will operate
and what the $ 126 million expected to be raised in taxes each year will go to.
Among the main points of the debate is one about how to allocate part of that money to communities where the law has punished what were previously crimes with a heavy hand.
[Marijuana is now legal in four more US states]
Evans, 71, who can barely walk after decades of working washing clothes and cleaning buildings,
has always resented the high price she paid for being arrested
with marijuana.
And now that this drug will soon be able to be bought, sold and used legally in the state, that bothers him even more.
"Imagine the number of people like me who tried to get over it and pay these fines, being broke," she says.
"Now they can change everything with us and say: 'Now everything is fine, to hell with all that you went through," he adds.
"I had to live with it."
Evans has worked to survive and that has been his entire life.
She grew up in poverty on the New Jersey shore, and began working at age 13, babysitting and cleaning houses.
She had her first child when she was still a teenager, and later she had three more.
They were all raised as a single mother.
For years, he would get up before dawn, take his children to school, and take a train to work, usually cleaning a house or office.
The payment was enough to cover food and rent.
In 2020, New Jersey voted to legalize the recreational use of marijuana.Getty Images
From time to time, she also sold small amounts of marijuana,
a risk she was willing to take
in order to guarantee her children clothing and food.
Evans wanted more, like a clerical salary with a better pay and less physical effort, but the day to day did not leave him much time to fight for that.
He came home one afternoon and learned of the raid.
He found a surety to post bail for the woman who was caring for his two minor daughters.
She then turned herself in to the police, who had charged her with a litany of crimes: possession of more than 50 grams of marijuana;
the sale or intent to sell marijuana;
endanger a minor;
and possession of a weapon (what Evans said was a single bullet that was not hers).
He posted bail and went back to work the next day.
She did not tell her employers, fearing they might fire her.
"I had to keep it up. I had to support my family," she recalled.
[Los Angeles eliminates marijuana convictions and thousands of Latino migrants breathe easier]
Evans said officers had exaggerated the amount of marijuana they had found, but she ended up pleading guilty to selling drugs and endangering a minor, while the other charges were dropped.
She was sentenced to three years on probation and more than $ 1,000 in fines.
Thereafter, he
had to reveal the conviction every time he was asked about previous arrests
in job applications or interviews.
When she did, they responded that they didn't need her.
The employers did not explain the reason and she did not ask.
But she knew why.
The House of Representatives passes a bill to decriminalize the use of marijuana at the federal level
Dec. 5, 202001: 47
Evans thought she had a stroke of luck when she was hired as a temporary cleaning and copying worker at Bellcore, a telecommunications research company that has since been sold and renamed.
She dressed well for work every day, hoping she would be hired full time.
The change had a profound effect on his second youngest daughter, Nafeesah Goldsmith, who was home at the time of the police raid.
"Seeing my mom dressed for work painted a different picture for me than was possible," Goldsmith said.
"It made me feel like my mom had more value. She was important."
One day, she was told that the company no longer needed her and was abruptly fired.
They gave no further explanation, but Evans believed it was because someone had found out about his conviction.
He went back to the cleaners.
"I had to live with it and do what I could, and go to the jobs that people let me have, and I couldn't do any better," Evans said.
In 2012, he paid a lawyer $ 1,100 to have his conviction expunged, but said the lawyer, whom Evans knew, did not take the case to completion.
Evans said he tried and failed to get his money back and that "that was it."
Goldsmith confessed that seeing her mother not doing so well, coupled with the trauma from the police raid,
unleashed a rebellious streak in her
that led her to go to her father's house and drop out of school.
She got pregnant at 15, and at 21, she was arrested with two friends for kidnapping and robbing a motel owner.
He served more than 12 years in prison.
Nafeesah Goldsmith sees a connection between her mother's marijuana conviction and the family problems that followed.Courtesy Nafeesah Goldsmith
Her younger sister followed a similar path and, in 2011, after being arrested with a pending warrant, she was found unconscious in her cell, Goldsmith said.
His death was determined to be due to natural causes, he added.
Goldsmith earned the equivalent of a high school diploma in prison and a college degree upon his release in 2015, and became a community leader and activist for criminal justice reform.
She views that drug bust, her mother's conviction, and its ripple effect on her family as an example of how strict enforcement of the marijuana law prevents people from rising economically and socially.
"What he took from her and what he did to us can't be fixed anymore
," Goldsmith said.
Using marijuana to make amends
Since the war on drugs intensified in the 1980s, multiple studies have documented how
Black and Latino people are disproportionately targeted by the police and the courts,
and how convictions prevent them from being
targeted.
people get public loans for their housing, receive financial aid from schools, find better-paying jobs, and maintain custody of their children.
Racial discrepancies exist despite data showing that black and white people use marijuana at similar rates, rates that persist even in places that have legalized marijuana but still criminalize some types of possession and sale, the American Union of Marijuana said. Civil Liberties in a study published in April.
[The House of Representatives passes a landmark bill to decriminalize marijuana at the federal level]
That has prompted legalization advocates and civil rights groups to push for more radical reforms, including making it easier for people to erase short sentences for marijuana possession and participating in the newly legalized marijuana market, as well as
helping to the communities where marijuana arrests caused the most damage
.
While some states have reserved licenses and funding for people who want to open legal marijuana shops,
few have taken the additional step of allocating a portion of
marijuana tax
proceeds
for health, education and social services in disadvantaged communities. .
Marijuana plants are displayed during a "marijuana show" in Denver, Colorado.Getty Images
In California, where recreational marijuana was legalized in 2018, lawmakers set aside up to $ 50 million a year in tax revenue for "community reinvestment grants" for local health departments and nonprofits to help people getting jobs, mental health services, drug treatment, and medical care.
"Bringing black people into the marijuana industry and making the industry fair is important, but there are a lot of people who don't intend to be in the industry because they were so hurt by the arrests and law enforcement. "said Tamar Todd, director of the New Approach PAC, which helps fund marijuana legalization campaigns.
"They are in communities where we should also be taking this restorative approach and helping," he added.
[The UN removes cannabis from the list of most dangerous drugs and recognizes its important medicinal properties]
Illinois, where legalization began in January, has established a similar program.
This is funded by a quarter of the state's marijuana tax revenue, which will distribute
grants to local nonprofits and community organizations
to expand legal services, economic development, violence prevention, and programs for youth and assistance to those released from prison.
Evanston, Illinois, just outside of Chicago, went one step further: The City Council voted to
create a local marijuana tax
that would fund a $ 10 million repairs program, to pay harmed black residents not just for arrests for marijuana but also for other discriminatory policies [in housing and real estate], known as the "red line."
The first wave of payments, planned for early 2021, will help beneficiaries cover down payments or repairs for their homes, said Kemone Hendricks, founder of Evanston Present and Future, a nonprofit involved in the project.
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"Just the fact that that door is opened to reparations for black people is very important," Hendricks cautioned.
The US House of Representatives this month passed a bill to decriminalize marijuana, which would create a fund for communities harmed by the war on drugs.
Although the measure is unlikely to pass the Republican-led Senate, its advocates said it marked a new step in redressing the damage caused by uneven enforcement of the drug law.
The New Jersey campaign
The fight to link marijuana legalization with financial aid for disadvantaged communities in New Jersey dates back almost four years, when state lawmakers first introduced a legalization bill, to help end the impact. discriminatory drug law enforcement in a state where, according to an ACLU study,
black people are three times more likely than whites to be charged with marijuana-related crimes [even if they use it equally] .
[Activists demand legalization of marijuana in Mexico]
But lawmakers did not include provisions for investing in communities in their first bills, and in March 2019 the effort for legalization collapsed.
Lawmakers let voters choose, who on November 3 approved legalization at a 2-to-1 ratio. That gave lawmakers a January 1 deadline to draft a law regulating a new cannabis industry, and revived the drive to send money to harmed communities.
Black legislators, black clergy, civil rights organizations and advocates for reform of the criminal justice system joined forces and presented their cause as a form of reparation for the economic devastation caused by the war on drugs.
This time, they were fueled by nationwide protests seeking racial justice following the May 25 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis by police.
Among their demands, along with provisions to make it easier for black people to enter the legal cannabis industry and for people to remove their marijuana convictions, was a special tax to fund community organizations working on job training, legal aid, healthcare. , housing, food assistance, literacy and youth recreation.
The Senate of Mexico approves a proposal to legalize the recreational use of marijuana
Nov. 21, 202000: 48
"The only right and fair way to legalize [marijuana] is to ensure that a decent amount of the revenue goes back to the communities affected by this injustice," said the Rev. Charles Boyer, founder of Salvation and Social Justice, a coalition of leaders. religious.
"Anything less is an injustice," he added.
The campaign resulted in a new version of the bill, agreed last week by leaders of the state Senate and the state Assembly, that would
reserve 70% of sales tax revenue for social justice programs.
The leaders have not yet released the details, but hope to approve the final version on December 17.
Assemblyman Jamel Holley, one of the black lawmakers who spearheaded the effort, said community investment provisions are essential for the law to live up to the ideals that drove the legalization effort:
correcting past mistakes and promoting racial equality
.
Holley's father was a drug dealer who was in prison for much of his childhood;
many of his friends also grew up in families torn apart by drug arrests.
[The prisoner "with the longest time in jail for marijuana crimes in the country" will be released before Christmas]
The provisions will fund "programs for those who have been hurt not just by the war on drugs, but by all the inequalities that African Americans and others experience every day," Holley said.
Ami Kachalia, a campaign strategist for the ACLU of New Jersey, said the state could become a model for the rest of the country.
"We want to light the way for other states," he said.
Forward
Evans no longer wants to have anything to do with marijuana.
She is retired and lives in a senior citizen building in South Jersey, about 100 miles from where she fought for so long.
He has spent much of his life trying to forget his arrest and everything it caused.
But he's happy marijuana is legal in New Jersey.
"It should have happened a long time ago
,
" he
said.
If so, perhaps things would have been different.
Photo taken on Aug. 15, 2019, of a marijuana plant in Gardena, California.
Goldsmith, on the other hand, believes that there may be a future for her in the new cannabis industry.
As an advocate for criminal justice reform, she has spoken out against solitary confinement in prison and recently joined the campaign to give black people a fair chance to obtain licenses and financial support to sell legal marijuana.
He dreams of opening a marijuana shop on the Jersey Shore, not far from where the raid occurred.
"My mother had to bear the punishment," he said, "but I will prosper now that it is legal."