Brooklyn is the National Epicenter of Racist Pot Arrests

AtlanticWire

Don't pretend you're terribly surprised. After all, Kings County (Brooklyn's home) is the county with the most marijuana possession arrests in the state with the most such arrests, according to the ACLU. But what might surprise you is that, if you're black, you're almost ten times more likely to be busted in Brooklyn than if you're white.

Earlier this week, the national ACLU released a study on marijuana arrests. Nationally, 45.7 percent of all drug-related arrests are for marijuana. One of the primary findings of the research was that blacks are more likely to be arrested than whites, in every state except Hawaii. Mapped by state, the ratio of black-to-white marijuana arrests looks like this. The darker the shade of the state in the interactive map below, the more likely a black person is to be arrested than a white person. No ratio is worse than Iowa, where blacks are 8.3 times more likely to be arrested.