Ben & Jerry's is getting serious about social justice.
The Vermont-based ice cream company is petitioning Congress to expunge marijuana convictions and offer pardons or amnesty to anyone whose only crime was cannabis possession. The reason? Ben & Jerry's says people of color are arrested far more frequently than people who are white. That's something the ice cream giant says isn't OK.
Marijuana laws have been changing in recent years, as societal views begin to shift. Recreational marijuana use is now legal in 10 states and Washington D.C. And, according to CNBC, 14 states have decriminalized cannabis, and 33 states allow the use of medical marijuana. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recently signed a law that will allow medical marijuana patients to get their hands on smokable cannabis products.
Ben & Jerry's says it loves legalization efforts, but the fact that black people are arrested for cannabis more often than white people is not good.
"Legalization without justice is half baked," the ice cream maker wrote in its newly-launched campaign for justice.
A 2018 New York Times investigation found black people were arrested on low-level marijuana charges at eight times the rate of white, non-Hispanic people in recent years. And, Hispanic people were arrested at five times the rate of white people. The newspaper says the disparity is even more pronounced in Manhattan, where black people were arrested at 15 times the rate of white people.
According to the American Civil Liberties Union, there were more than 8 million pot arrests between 2001 and 2010 in the U.S.
"That’s one bust every 37 seconds and hundreds of thousands ensnared in the criminal justice system," the ACLU writes on its website. "Enforcing marijuana laws costs us about $3.6 billion a year, yet the War on Marijuana has failed to diminish the use or availability of marijuana."
Ben & Jerry's is praising prosecutors in some larger cities, where officials have announced plans to stop prosecuting marijuana possession cases. The company says it's time to take that social change to a national scale, and it currently has more than 33,000 signatures on an online petition to change the way our country handles marijuana enforcement.
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