Kevin Winter
/
Getty Images
Killer Mike has penned a new op-ed for Rolling Stone, detailing the ways that the growing legal marijuana industry can work to address racism and the prison-industrial complex. The Atlanta rapper begins the piece by providing an overview of marijuana law in the United States and how these regulations have been used to disproportionately affect black Americans, despite statistics showing that marijuana use among white and black people is almost exactly the same.
"The current movement to legalize marijuana offers a small but important opportunity to dismantle these inequalities," he writes. "And yet the people most likely to be victims of marijuana prohibition are the least likely to profit in its aftermath." Killer Mike then goes on to explain how states that have legalized marijuana are rearranging their legal codes, holding up California's Proposition 64 — which allows many with marijuana convictions to have their criminal records wiped clean — as the most forward-thinking example.
"As marijuana reform begins to de-escalate the drug war, creating new opportunities for employment and entrepreneurship in the process, it is imperative that the people most in need of a second chance actually get one," he concludes. "The price they have already paid for our failed drug policy is steep enough."
Read Killer Mike's full op-ed on marijuana industry here.
