CALIFORNIA NAACP BACKING OF POT LEGALIZATION OUTRAGES MINISTER

The state chapter of the NAACP is endorsing a November ballot
initiative to legalize recreational marijuana use and Sacramento
minister Ron Allen is furious.

Their competing arguments stir debate over which perceived threat is
greater for African Americans police exploiting existing marijuana
law to target urban minorities or legalized pot endangering youths
and communities.

In a news conference today, the California State Conference of the
NAACP is due to throw its support behind the initiative to legalize
marijuana for adults over 21, allow small residential cultivation and
permit cities to tax and regulate pot sales.

In a statement, Alice Huffman, the state NAACP president, said the
organization is backing the initiative, Proposition 19, to counter
marijuana arrest rates that she contends unfairly target African Americans.

"There is a strong racial component that must be considered when we
investigate how marijuana laws are applied to people of color," she
said. "The burden has fallen disproportionately on people of color
and young black men in particular."

But Allen, president of the International Faith-Based Coalition, a
Sacramento group representing 3,600 congregations, said he is stunned
the state NAACP would favor legalized marijuana.

"Most African American pastors are disappointed, absolutely
disappointed with the decision," said Allen, bishop of the Greater
Solomon Temple Community Church in Oak Park. "If anyone should know
the effects of illicit drugs in the black community, it should be one
of our most respected civil rights organizations."

The endorsement is timed to today's release of a study by the Drug
Policy Alliance, a group seeking alternatives to the drug war.

Titled "Targeting Blacks for Marijuana," the study uses county arrest
statistics to show a higher rate of marijuana possession arrests
among African Americans.

Stephen Gutwillig, California director of the Drug Policy Alliance,
said the state NAACP is "the first mainstream civil rights
organization to endorse marijuana legalization.

"This represents the expansion of the ... alliance of forces across
the political spectrum from the progressive left to the libertarian
right that agree we have to junk this disastrous prohibition policy," he said.

Roger Salazar, a Democratic consultant working with "Public Safety
Now," a group opposing the marijuana initiative said the NAACP
endorsement is "unusual."

He added: "Reasonable people can argue about the merits of
legalization ... But the unintended consequences of this initiative
will be a disaster for all California communities."

The NAACP endorsement isn't necessarily a harbinger of the African
American vote.

In 2008, the organization opposed the Proposition 8 ban on same-sex
marriage. But African Americans voted overwhelmingly for the initiative.