University of Toronto, Canada.
University of Toronto, Canada.
Int J Drug Policy. 2021 May;91:102937. doi: 10.1016/j.drugpo.2020.102937. Epub 2020 Oct 1.
The enforcement of drug laws in the United States has been heavily racialized. A substantial proportion of individuals arrested and prosecuted for drug possession in America are Black and Latino, despite similar rates of drug use across racial groups. Due to a lack of access to racially disaggregated criminal justice data, little is known about how race influences drug law enforcement in Canada.
We conducted an analysis of cannabis arrest data obtained from police services in five Canadian cities (Vancouver, Calgary, Regina, Ottawa, Halifax) to determine whether racial differences exist in rates of arrest for minor cannabis possession in Canada.
With just one exception, we find that both Black and Indigenous people are over-represented amongst those arrested for cannabis possession across the five cities examined.
Canadian cannabis legalization lacks measures to redress the racialized harms caused by the war on drugs because the full extent of these harms remains largely unknown. Broader collection and dissemination of disaggregated criminal justice data is needed in the Canadian context in order to inform criminal justice and social policy.
美国的禁毒法律执行存在严重的种族主义倾向。尽管不同种族群体的毒品使用率相似，但在美国因持有毒品被捕和被起诉的人中，相当大一部分是黑人和拉丁裔。由于缺乏种族分类刑事司法数据，对于种族如何影响加拿大禁毒执法，人们知之甚少。
我们分析了从加拿大五个城市（温哥华、卡尔加里、里贾纳、渥太华、哈利法克斯）的警察部门获得的大麻逮捕数据，以确定在加拿大，因持有少量大麻被捕的人中是否存在种族差异。
除了一个例外，我们发现，在被调查的五个城市中，因持有大麻被捕的黑人及原住民人数均不成比例地过高。
加拿大的大麻合法化缺乏措施来纠正毒品战争造成的种族化伤害，因为这些伤害的全部程度在很大程度上仍然未知。在加拿大，需要更广泛地收集和传播分类刑事司法数据，以便为刑事司法和社会政策提供信息。
