Tag Archives: Blacks
VIDEO: Study: Pot Arrests Higher For Blacks Than Whites
A new report shows if you’re black, you’re more likely to go to jail. A look at the reasons behind the disparity in pot arrests.
Blacks With Certain Gene Need Lower Doses of Warfarin: Study
WEDNESDAY June 5, 2013 — The discovery of a genetic variation that affects how some black patients respond to the blood thinner warfarin could improve the safety and effectiveness of the drug, researchers report.
Blacks with this common genetic variation need a significantly lower dose of warfarin than those without the variation, the researchers report online June 4 in The Lancet.
“Adding this genetic marker — found in more than 40 percent of African-American patients in the study — to standard dosing algorithms improved the predictability of warfarin dosing by 21 percent in these individuals, which has the potential to increase the safety and effectiveness of this notoriously hard-to- dose drug,” study leader Julie Johnson, of the University of Florida, said in a journal news release.
Warfarin is widely used to prevent blood clots in patients with a heart rhythm disorder called atrial fibrillation, a history of previous blood clots and after major surgery. However, it can be difficult to determine the correct dose for individual patients.
Previous research has identified two genes that explain about 30 percent of the difference in warfarin response in people of European and Asian ancestry, but these genes have less of an effect in blacks.
In this study, the researchers analyzed health information and DNA samples from hundreds of blacks and determined that there was a strong association between the rs12777823 variant on chromosome 10 and warfarin dose. The findings suggest that the dose of warfarin required by blacks with one or two copies of this variant is about 7 milligrams (mg) to 9 mg less per week than for other patients, the researchers said.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration advocates use of genetic backgrounds to help guide warfarin dosing, Mark Alberts, of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas and author of an accompanying editorial, said in the news release. “However, the practical aspects [and limitations] have not been fully appreciated.
“Genetic testing has several challenges: it is not widely available in some areas; it is costly; and clinicians often can identify the correct dose before test results are available. If these problems were corrected, the actual use of such tests might increase substantially,” Alberts noted.
More information
The American Heart Association has more about warfarin.
Posted: June 2013
Blacks Are Singled Out for Marijuana Arrests
Black Americans were nearly four times as likely as whites to be arrested on charges of marijuana possession in 2010, even though the two groups used the drug at similar rates, according to new federal data.
This disparity had grown steadily from a decade before, and in some states, including Iowa, Minnesota and Illinois, blacks were around eight times as likely to be arrested. During the same period, public attitudes toward marijuana softened and a number of states decriminalized its use. But about half of all drug arrests in 2011 were on marijuana-related charges, roughly the same portion as in 2010.
Advocates for the legalization of marijuana have criticized the Obama administration for having vocally opposed state legalization efforts and for taking a more aggressive approach than the Bush administration in closing medical marijuana dispensaries and prosecuting their owners in some states, especially Montana and California.
The new data, however, offers a more nuanced picture of marijuana enforcement on the state level. Drawn from police records from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, the report is the most comprehensive review of marijuana arrests by race and by county and is part of a report being released this week by the American Civil Liberties Union. Much of the data was also independently reviewed for The New York Times by researchers at Stanford University.
“We found that in virtually every county in the country, police have wasted taxpayer money enforcing marijuana laws in a racially biased manner,” said Ezekiel Edwards, the director of the A.C.L.U.’s Criminal Law Reform Project and the lead author of the report.
During President Obama’s first three years in office, the arrest rate for marijuana possession was about 5 percent higher than the average rate under President George W. Bush. And in 2011, marijuana use grew to about 7 percent, up from 6 percent in 2002 among Americans who said that they had used the drug in the past 30 days. Also, a majority of Americans in a Pew Research Center poll conducted in March supported legalizing marijuana.
Though there has been a shift in state laws and in popular attitudes about the drug, black and white Americans have experienced the change very differently.
“It’s pretty clear that law enforcement practices are not keeping pace with public opinion and state policies,” said Mona Lynch, a professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
She added that 13 states have in recent years passed or expanded laws decriminalizing marijuana use and that 18 states now allow it for medicinal use.
In the past year, Colorado and Washington State have legalized marijuana, leaving the Justice Department to decide how to respond to those laws because marijuana remains illegal under federal law.
The cost of drug enforcement has grown steadily over the past decade. In 2010, states spent an estimated $ 3.6 billion enforcing marijuana possession laws, a 30 percent increase from 10 years earlier. The increase came as many states, faced with budget shortfalls, were saving money by using alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent offenders. During the same period, arrests for most other types of crime steadily dropped.
Researchers said the growing racial disparities in marijuana arrests were especially striking because they were so consistent even across counties with large or small minority populations.
The A.C.L.U. report said that one possible reason that the racial disparity in arrests remained despite shifting state policies toward the drug is that police practices are slow to change. Federal programs like the Edward Byrne Justice Assistance Grant Program continue to provide incentives for racial profiling, the report said, by including arrest numbers in its performance measures when distributing hundreds of millions of dollars to local law enforcement each year.
Phillip Atiba Goff, a psychology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said that police departments, partly driven by a desire to increase their drug arrest statistics, can concentrate on minority or poorer neighborhoods to meet numerical goals, focusing on low-level offenses that are easier, quicker and cheaper than investigating serious felony crimes.
“Whenever federal funding agencies encourage law enforcement to meet numerical arrest goals instead of public safety goals, it will likely promote stereotype-based policing and we can expect these sorts of racial gaps,” Professor Goff said.
A version of this article appeared in print on June 4, 2013, on page A11 of the New York edition with the headline: Blacks Are Singled Out For Marijuana Arrests, Federal Data Suggests.
Source: New York Times (NY)
Author: Ian Urbina
Published: June 4, 2013
Copyright: 2013 The New York Times Company
Contact: letters@nytimes.com
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Cannabis News – Medical Marijuana, Hemp, Marijuana News, Cannabis
Blacks Are Singled Out for Marijuana Arrests, Federal Data Suggests
Black Americans were nearly four times as likely as whites to be arrested for marijuana possession in 2010, but both groups used the drug at similar rates, federal data shows.
NYT > Marijuana and Medical Marijuana
Study show NYPD marijuana arrests (still) target blacks and Hispanics over whites
The NYPD’s stop and frisk campaign led directly to the surge in low-level marijuana arrests, figures released today by the New York Civil Liberties Union show.
For context, marijuana arrests are the top arrest category in the entire stop and frisk program. Last year, five percent–or 26,000–of all stops were for suspected possession of marijuana. Despite the fact that whites use marijuana at a higher rate, blacks by far bore the brunt of those stops–61 percent, in all. Incredibly, just 9 percent of marijuana-based stop involved white folks. More over at the Village Voice.
