The Costs of a Marijuana Possession Arrest: Race, the War on Drugs, and the Black-White Earnings Gap

Join us on Friday, April 29, 2022, at 3 p.m. for a conversation with Jackie McLean Fellow Edwin Grimsley about his dissertation on “The Costs of a Marijuana Possession Arrest: Race, the War on Drugs, and the Black-White Earnings Gap.”

Despite the legalization of cannabis in 18 states in the United States, police departments in the United States arrested someone for a marijuana offense every 24 seconds in 2020. We know that people with criminal records face long odds of securing employment, but we still know very little about the effects of the War on Drugs. McLean Fellow Edwin Grimsley will track the effects of a criminal record for marijuana possession on the labor market for young adults in the United States. This talk focuses on the consequences of arrest for marijuana possession for Black men and women and the damaging effects of an arrest on short and long-term income earnings. The conversation will reveal an important, and much underrecognized, mechanism of cumulative inequality.

April 29, 2022, at 3 p.m. Shaw Center Hillyer Hall