The Myth of Racially-Equal Pot Use

A tweet from the ACLU of Minnesota claimed “Blacks & whites use marijuana at the same rate but blacks are 11x’s more likely to be arrested for possession in MPLS [Minneapolis]”. This has been a solid talking point for marijuana reformers, but is it true?

That African-Americans are arrested, jailed, and sentenced more for drug crimes, including marijuana, is not in dispute. That blacks are disproportionately targeted compared to their relative share of drug users in society is not in doubt. But do black and white Americans really use marijuana at the same rate? It depends on how you look at it.

If we ask Americans “have you ever used marijuana,” we find that 44 percent of all people aged 12 and older have tried it. But that works out to just under 49 percent of all non-Hispanic whites and just over 42 percent of all non-Hispanic African-Americans, according to the 2013 National Survey on Drug Use & Health. Whites are more likely to have smoked pot, by a large margin.

But how valid is that lifetime use statistic? That’s going to include the 21-year-old black person who is smoking marijuana right now along with 68-year-old former president Bill Clinton, who didn’t inhale forty years ago. Certainly, using marijuana in one’s younger years is more likely to lead to law enforcement attention. Still, other than ages 12-17, more whites have used marijuana in their lifetime than blacks.

Let’s concentrate instead on recent users of marijuana. Among people who answered that they used marijuana in the past year, 14.3 percent of blacks and 13 percent of whites were annual tokers. As teens (age 12-17), annual marijuana use rates are about equal – 13.9 percent for blacks and 13.3 percent for whites. But among the college-age-18-to-25 demographic 35 percent of whites toked compared to 31.3 percent of blacks. At age 26-34, black use is at 27 percent compared to white use at 24.5 percent. Then after age 35, whites retake the edge in pot smoking.

A similar pattern holds when we look at current monthly use. Overall, 9 percent of blacks and 7.8 percent of whites used marijuana. At ages 12-17, use is about equal – 7.4 percent black, 7.2 percent white. In the college years, whites overtake blacks, 21.7 percent to 18.8 percent. At ages 26-34, blacks overtake whites, 17.9 percent to 14.3 percent. After age 35, whites overtake blacks, but are statistically almost equal.

So, one could say that over their lifetimes, whites are more likely to have smoked pot than blacks. One could also say judging by recent (annual) or current (monthly) use, blacks are more likely to smoke pot than whites. But if we narrow it down by age, college-age (18-25) and middle-age (35+) whites are more likely to smoke pot, while young-adult (26-34) blacks are more likely to smoke pot.

Another way to look at it would be to restrict the responses to just those people under age 30, who make up more than three-out-of-four marijuana arrests. In that case, whites are more likely than blacks to have used marijuana in their lifetimes (45.6 percent vs. 40.5 percent), recently (26.5 vs. 24.8), and currently (15.9 vs. 14.7).

What’s also interesting is that black marijuana users are more likely to use only marijuana, while whites are more likely to have used other illicit drugs. Over their lifetime, over one-third of whites aged under 30 have tried a drug other than marijuana, compared to over one-fifth of blacks who have tried other drugs. Among current (monthly) users, whites are over 50 percent more likely to be using a non-marijuana drug than blacks (6.4 percent vs. 4.2 percent).

In the most relevant data sets, whites are more likely to be using drugs and/or marijuana than blacks in America. That makes the disproportionate punishment of blacks for marijuana and drugs even more reprehensible.