African Americans and the Marijuana Legalization Paradox: Do Race-Specific Murder Victimization...

Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice, 9:110–135, 2011Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 1537-7938 print / 1537-7946 onlineDOI: 10.1080/15377938.2011.566813

African Americans and the MarijuanaLegalization Paradox: Do Race-Specific Murder

Victimization Rates and Race-Specific DrugArrest Rates Explain It?

THEODORE E. THORNHILLDepartment of Sociology, University of Massachusetts–Amherst, Amherst, Massachusetts, USA

Why is support for marijuana legalization among African Amer-icans notably modest given that such a policy would drasticallyreduce the number of African Americans arrested annually fornonviolent drug offenses? In this article I assess whether the urbanfrustration argument is an adequate explanation for Blacks’ gen-erally low levels of support for marijuana legalization. I analyzedmerged Supplemental Homicide Report and Drug Arrest data andGeneral Social Survey data to determine the extent to which race-specific murder victimization rates and race-specific drug arrestrates in U.S. cities are predictive of support for marijuana legaliza-tion among Blacks and Whites between 1990 and 2000. Findingsindicate that Blacks’ level of support for marijuana legalizationis greatest in those cities with the highest Black drug arrest rates.Consequently, these findings provide no support for the urban frus-tration argument.

KEYTERMS Marijuana legalization, African Americans, urbanfrustration argument, drug arrests

Submitted July 2010; resubmitted October 2010; accepted November 2010.I would like to thank Roland Chilton, Wenona Rymond-Richmond, and Donald

Tomaskovic-Devey for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript. I wouldalso like to thank the editor and the three anonymous reviewers for their helpful commentsand suggestions. An earlier version of this article was presented at the March 2010 AnnualMeeting of the Eastern Sociological Society, Boston, Massachusetts.

Address correspondence to Theodore E. Thornhill, Department of Sociology, Universityof Massachusetts–Amherst, Thompson Hall, Amherst, MA 01003. E-mail: [email protected]

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African Americans and Marijuana Legalization Paradox 111

INTRODUCTION

For nearly three decades the war on drugs has disproportionately impactedurban African American communities (Duster, 1997; King, 2008; Mauer, 2006;Mauer & King, 2007; Nunn, 2002; Provine, 2006; Tonry, 1994, 1995). Some ofthe most significant effects of the war on drugs identified by scholars includefamily disruption and dissolution (Arditti & McClintock, 2001), weakenedcommunities (Arditti & McClintock, 2001), increased racial profiling (Banks,1997; Nunn, 2002; Provine, 2006), fear of and increased ambivalence towardlaw enforcement (Bobo & Thompson, 2006; Brooks, 2000), and increasedincarceration (Arditti & McClintock, 2001; Mauer, 2006; Meares, 1997; Tonry,1995). All of these outcomes are seen by some to exacerbate racially dis-parate Black drug arrest rates. As of 2008, African Americans were beingarrested for drug offenses at a rate 2.95 times greater than that of Whites(U.S. Department of Justice, 2008). What makes this statistic all the moreimpressive is that racially disparate drug arrest rates cannot be attributedto greater levels of drug use or drug dealing among African Americans asthere is strong evidence indicating that Whites are just as likely to use andsell drugs (Mauer & King, 2007; National Institute on Drug Abuse, 2003;Saxe et al., 2001). Although still highly contested, one policy proposal thatcontinues to be suggested as a means of ameliorating the impact of thedrug war on African American communities is marijuana legalization. Theprincipal argument in support of this position is simple: If marijuana werelegalized, there would be a significant reduction in the number of Black drugarrests annually. Interestingly, however, African Americans’ level of supportfor marijuana legalization has been and remains noticeably low, particularlycompared to that of Whites.

Between 1986 and 2006 there was a 100% increase in the level of sup-port for the legalization of marijuana in the United States, from 18.3% to36.8%, respectively (J. A. Davis & Smith, 2007). However, when we disag-gregate the data by race (Figure 1) we find that the proportion of Blackrespondents supporting legalization increased from 22% to 30% from 1986to 2006. This increase is small in comparison to the increase over the sameperiod in the proportion of White respondents supporting legalization. Thatproportion increased from 18% to 41% (J. A. Davis & Smith, 2007). What arewe to make of the remarkable increase in support for marijuana legalizationamong Whites and the notably modest increase among Blacks during thisperiod? One might logically have expected to observe the opposite situation.That is, a substantial increase in Black support since 1986 and greater levelsof support among Blacks compared to Whites in 2006. However, this wasnot the case in either instance and appears paradoxical for two reasons. First,as law enforcement shifted its emphasis to marijuana violations beginningin 1992, larger numbers of Blacks began being arrested for simple posses-sion of marijuana (King, 2008). Second, violent crime declined dramatically

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FIGURE 1 Support for marijuana legalization by race, 1986–2006. Source: General SocialSurvey (GSS), 1986 and 2006.

beginning in 1994 (Figure 2), yet the number of Blacks and Whites arrestedfor drug violations increased substantially during the latter half of the 1990s.The race-specific drug arrest rates for cities with populations over 100,000shows Black arrest rates for drug offenses that are three times as high as

FIGURE 2 Race-specific murder victimization rates for GSS respondentsa in large U.S. citiesb,1990–2000. Source: General Social Surveys 1990–2000, Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI)Supplemental Homicide Reports 1990–2000, and Census of Population and Housing, 1990and 2000; aFor each year GSS respondents were assigned a race-specific murder victimizationrate based on their race; bLarge Cities ! 100,000.


FIGURE 3 Race-specific drug arrest rates for GSS respondentsa in large U.S. citiesb, 1990–2000. Source: The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Report (UCR) ArrestRecords and United States Census, 1990 and 2000; aFor each year GSS respondents wereassigned a race-specific drug arrest rate based on their race; bLarge Cities !100,000.

White rates (Figure 3). One might have expected the Black drug arrest rate toprecipitate an increase in support for marijuana legalization among AfricanAmericans. This, however, does not appear to have been the case and istherefore not an adequate explanation for this paradox.

The urban frustration argument (see Brooks, 2000) suggests that itshould come as no surprise that Blacks are less likely than Whites to supportthe legalization of marijuana. This line of reasoning follows from an assump-tion that marijuana legalization would increase overall drug use as well ascrime, both of which already disproportionately affect urban Black commu-nities. As such, residents of these communities are not willing to gamblewith this possibility. As I describe later in the article, the urban frustrationargument has been charged with being weak on empirical evidence. Andalthough theoretically sound to some (e.g., Meares & Kahan, 1999), the ur-ban frustration argument does not appear to account for the possibility thatthere are alternative and more complex interpretations that problematize thecurrent drug law enforcement strategies1 and that it is instead the war ondrugs and its resultant mass Black arrests and incarcerations that concernsresidents of urban Black communities. In this article I assess the extent towhich the urban frustration argument is an adequate explanation for the gen-erally low levels of support for marijuana legalization among Black surveyrespondents.

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In recent years, scholars have made important contributions to our un-derstanding of how African Americans think about drug policy2; still moststudies are limited to identifying the demographic correlates (e.g., income,education, gender, age, political ideology, religiosity) of those taking variouspositions on drug-related issues (see Meares, 1997, for an exception). In thisarticle, I argue that in order to properly understand the forgoing paradoxwe must consider not only the demographic characteristics of individualsbut also the structural context in which they are embedded. More specif-ically, by incorporating race-specific murder victimization rates as a proxyfor violent victimization and violent crime more generally and race-specificdrug arrest rates (a measure of both the presence of drug market activity,particularly the open-air variety, and drug law enforcement) into a modelseeking to explain Black support for marijuana legalization we should beable to determine whether the ecological context within which Blacks resideinfluences their support for marijuana legalization. As an initial contributionin this direction I analyzed merged Supplemental Homicide Report and DrugArrest data with General Social Survey data to determine the extent to whichrace-specific murder victimization rates and race-specific drug arrest rates inU.S. cities are predictive of support for marijuana legalization among Blacksand Whites between 1990 and 2000.

RACE AND DRUG ARRESTS

In the early 1990s an important shift took place in the nature of drug arrests.Whereas “[i]n the 1980s, drug arrests were primarily targeted toward cocaineand heroin . . . since 1992 nearly half of all drug arrests have been for mar-ijuana” (King, 2008, p. 19). Furthermore, substantial increases in marijuanaarrests have accounted for the vast majority of growth in overall drug arrests(King, 2008). Most of these arrests have been for possession, not sale ormanufacturing. And although increased drug arrests for marijuana violationshave been reported for Americans from all racial and ethnic backgrounds asa result of these shifts in drug law enforcement, African Americans and theircommunities have been most adversely affected (Mauer, 2006; Tonry, 1995).African Americans now account for approximately one-third of all marijuanaarrests (King, 2008). As a result, large and highly disproportionate numbersof African Americans are being arrested for possession of a substance thatmany Americans consider benign and believe should be legal to possess.Furthermore, when we consider that once arrested Blacks are more likely tobe convicted and routinely receive longer sentences than members of otherracial and ethnic groups, these trends in drug arrests support assertions of aracially biased system of justice. In this article I argue that these important


trends in drug arrests cannot be divorced from the ecological context inwhich Blacks reside, and it is to this topic that I now turn.

RACIAL RESIDENTIAL SEGREGATION AND NEIGHBORHOODDISADVANTAGE

Due to the high levels of residential segregation in the United States, themajority of Blacks live in predominantly Black neighborhoods; this is par-ticularly the case in large metropolitan areas (Charles, 2003; Massey &Denton, 1993). According to Massey (1995), racial segregation “concentrate[s]poverty geographically, which in turn concentrates crime, thus creating anecological niche characterized by a high level of violence and a high risk ofvictimization” (p. 1216). Furthermore, the interaction between race and classproduces a particular ecological patterning among households within raciallysegregated metropolitan areas whereby middle class Black neighborhoodsare often geographically adjacent to more economically disadvantaged Blackneighborhoods (Anderson, 1999; Krivo, Peterson, & Karafin, 2006; Pattillo,2005; Pattillo-McCoy, 1999). As a result, middle class Black communities areoften “subject to the spillover of violence and other problems that result fromgreater disadvantage in nearby communities” (Krivo et al., 2006, p. 250). Anextensive review of the literature on Black middle class neighborhoods byPattillo (2005) concludes that middle class Blacks reside in neighborhoodswith violent crime rates that are significantly greater than those in Whitemiddle class neighborhoods. “White middle class communities are rarely indanger of these proximity effects . . . [as] most have the advantage of relativedistance from areas of urban disadvantage” (Krivo et al., 2006, p. 250). Thisadvantage in residential context held by Whites extends down the socioe-conomic ladder, as the differential neighborhood conditions in which urbanBlacks and Whites reside are seen at all income levels (Charles, 2003). Sociol-ogist Robert Sampson (1987) has documented that “the worst urban contextsin which whites reside . . . are considerably better off than the mean levels forblack communities” (p. 354). The evidence is strong and clear; Blacks andWhites in the United States live in fundamentally different neighborhoodsand communities with particularly deleterious consequences for the lives ofBlacks.

DRUG MARKET ACTIVITY IN URBAN BLACK COMMUNITIES

Blacks are much more likely than Whites to live in those communities char-acterized by the presence of outdoor drug markets.3 Walker, Spohn, andDeLone (2007) summarizing data from the National Household Survey on

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Drug Abuse report that “a far greater number of African American and His-panic youth (approximately one-third) reported seeing people sell drugs inthe neighborhood occasionally or more often than whites did (less than 10percent) (p. 58).” Furthermore, the drug markets in urban African Americancommunities tend to operate outdoors (as opposed to White suburban drugmarkets that tend to operate behind closed doors) making participants andtheir illegal activities more visible to both law enforcement officials and com-munity residents (Mauer, 2006). In addition to the multitude of quantitativestudies documenting the Black–White differences in neighborhood drug-related activity, a large body of ethnographic work undertaken in urbancommunities throughout the United States has richly described the uniqueways in which illegal drugs permeate the daily lives of urban Blacks. Almostall urban ethnographers have documented the presence of illegal drug mar-kets in disadvantaged Black and Hispanic communities in cities throughoutthe United States.4 As it concerns drugs, this body of ethnographic work canbe summed up succinctly with a quote from Elijah Anderson (1999), “drugshave . . . become deeply rooted in the inner-city black community” (p. 111).Though difficult to determine empirically due to the complex nature of therelationship and the issue of causality, most scholars think that violent crimewithin urban Black communities is related to the illegal drug market activitythat has become a fixture within these communities (e.g., Brownstein, 1991;Kennedy, 1994; Meares, 1997, 1998). However, the empirical evidence con-firming this proposition is limited, which is at least partly due to the lack ofclarity in the term drug related. Therefore, empirical confirmation that Blacksare more likely to be victims of crimes caused by drug use or conflicts overdrug markets is needed. However, until this time the conclusion reachedby Brownstein (1991, p. 95) that “most drug-related violence is confined topeople who, by choice or circumstance, live in or near . . . communities andneighborhoods” with high levels of drug-related activity remains convincing,as it implies that Blacks are more likely than Whites to experience drug-related violent victimization given that Black communities are more likelyto be characterized by high levels of open-air drug market activity. As such,the burden would appear to lie with those suggesting otherwise, namelythat Whites are just as or more likely to be violently victimized as a directconsequence of illegal drug market activity.

THE MARIJUANA LEGALIZATION PARADOX?

African Americans are generally less supportive of marijuana legalizationthan Whites (J. A. Davis & Smith, 2007). In a study investigating drug le-galization and drug-law enforcement, Meares (1997) found that, “More edu-cated, city-dwelling whites were 1.6 times more likely to favor legalization ofmarijuana than the least-educated, city-dwelling African-Americans” (p. 5).


That is, those Americans who are at the greatest risk of victimization causedby drug use or drug sales and those at the greatest risk of being arrestedfor drug possession appear to be among the least likely to support the le-galization of marijuana. And, those city residents least likely to experiencedrug-related violent victimization (i.e., Whites) appear to be among the mostsupportive of marijuana legalization. For some time now scholars have won-dered why a larger percentage of Blacks have not supported measures suchas marijuana legalization, which, it has been argued, might greatly reducemany of the negative effects stemming from illegal drug markets and whathave been described as “draconian” U.S. drug laws that have together beenplaguing African American communities for at least 25 years. One of the mostobvious and potentially significant positive effects of marijuana legalizationis the attendant reduction of African Americans arrested for drug law viola-tions. Therefore, the consistently low level of support for marijuana legaliza-tion among African Americans appears paradoxical. Specifically, residents ofBlack communities who stand to benefit most directly from marijuana legal-ization by a drastic reduction in the number of Blacks arrested for marijuanaviolations tend to be those least supportive of this particular drug policyreform proposal. However, it is a sociological axiom that social-structuralconditions can and do have an influence on the development of attitudesand behaviors. So in this light, the Black–White difference in support formarijuana legalization might be understandable if we consider that Blacksand Whites live in fundamentally different neighborhoods and communi-ties (Sampson & Wilson, 1995), characterized by quite different types andlevels of drug market activity. There is already a small body of literaturedocumenting that race differences in drug views are at least partially due tothe significantly different experiences of Blacks and Whites vis-a-vis crime,drug-related activity, and the criminal justice system (see e.g., Meares, 1997,1998). However, simply because Blacks and Whites live in different contextsdoes not necessarily mean that Blacks’ elevated exposure to drug marketsand violent crime would automatically result in lower levels of support formarijuana legalization, although it does not rule out this possibility. Further-more, it is also possible that variation in support for marijuana legalizationmight exist among Blacks given that violent crime and drug market activityis not constant across African American communities.

Significant disagreement among scholars abounds with respect to thesocietal effects of marijuana legalization (Inciardi & McBride, 1989; Inciardi,2002; Jacobs, 1990; Wilson, 1990). Those on the prohibitionist side of thedebate argue that at a minimum there would be a significant increase inoverall drug use and drug-related crime, particularly violent crime, under aregime of legalization (De Leon, 1994; Inciardi, 1999, 2002; Wilson, 1990). Incontrast, supporters of legalization argue that marijuana users are not proneto criminality and that any increase in marijuana consumption would betrivial and would be offset by the positive effects of significant reductions in

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marijuana drug arrests (Nadelmann, 1988, 2004, 2007, 2008; Resignato, 2000).Still, survey research has consistently shown that the general public believesthat drugs and violent crime are strongly related and that “drug-related crimewould actually increase if drugs were legalized” (Blendon & Young, 1998,p. 830). At least one study, a meta-analysis of 47 national surveys conductedbetween 1978 and 1997, has shown that the number of Americans whobelieve that drug legalization would be generative of violent crime is morethan twice the number (25%) who think that crime would decrease as aresult of drug legalization (Blendon & Young, 1998). Although unmeasuredin the present study, it is possible that it is this type of sentiment that isproducing Blacks’ generally low levels of support for marijuana legalization.In this article I situate the apparent paradox of relatively weak Black supportfor marijuana legalization within the framework of the “urban frustrationargument.”

THE URBAN FRUSTRATION ARGUMENT

The urban frustration argument has traditionally been used to explain Blacks’support for unconventional and controversial law enforcement practices suchas housing searches, gang loitering laws, and juvenile curfews among resi-dents of crime, gang, and drug-ridden minority communities (Brooks, 2000;Kennedy, 1994; Meares & Kahan, 1999). The central claim of the urbanfrustration argument is as follows: Because of dangerous neighborhood con-ditions most urban minority residents are willing to forego their constitu-tional rights (by enduring more invasive, restrictive, and discretionary lawenforcement practices) in order that crime, gangs, and drug activity might begreatly reduced. The urban frustration argument has been criticized for beingmore anecdotal than empirical. That is, though often well intentioned andsurely supported by some individuals and community organizations, theseare highly contested law enforcement practices; there is no rigorous quantita-tive empirical evidence demonstrating that the majority of residents of thesecommunities support these practices (Brooks, 2000; Cole, 1995). These crit-icisms point to the limited empirical research indicating that a majority ofAfrican American residents from disadvantaged neighborhoods throughoutthe United States are supportive of policies such as housing searches, gangloitering laws, and juvenile curfews. Instead, critics argue that these policiesrequire law-abiding citizens to endure often demeaning, humiliating, andexcessively discretionary law enforcement practices in the hope that doingso will reduce crime in their communities. Still, it is certainly plausible thatthe urban frustration argument might be able to at least partially explainthe paradox of weak Black support for marijuana legalization, particularlygiven that there is no compelling extant evidence suggesting that urban


Blacks understand marijuana legalization to be in the best interests of theircommunities.

As applied to the present study, the theoretical expectation suggestedby the urban frustration argument is that there should be lower levels ofsupport for marijuana legalization among African Americans in cities withgreater levels of violent victimization and drug arrests. This is based on thefollowing assumption: African Americans in communities with higher levelsof crime and drug market activity would be less likely to support a policythat might potentially result in increased drug use and violent crime.

RESEARCH HYPOTHESES

Four hypotheses are suggested by the urban frustration argument:

Hypothesis 1: Blacks in cities with higher Black murder victimization rateswill be less likely to support marijuana legalization than Blacks in citieswith lower Black murder victimization rates.

Hypothesis 2: Blacks in cities with higher Black drug arrest rates will be lesslikely to support marijuana legalization than Blacks in cities with lowerBlack drug arrest rates.

Hypothesis 3: The effect of the race-specific drug arrest rate should be greateramong Blacks than among Whites.

Hypothesis 4: The effect of the race-specific murder victimization rate shouldbe greater among Blacks than among Whites.

METHODS

Data

The data for this study come from three sources: (a) The National OpinionResearch Center’s (NORC) General Social Surveys (GSSs), (b) The FederalBureau of Investigation’s (FBI’s) Uniform Crime Report (UCR) Arrest Records,and (c) the FBI’s Supplemental Homicide Reports. The GSS is a nationallyrepresentative sample of the noninstitutionalized adult (18+) population ofthe United States that was conducted every year between 1972 and 1994(except for 1979, 1981, and 1992). Beginning in 1994 the NORC began ad-ministering the GSS every other year. Between 1972 and 1993 the samplesize was approximately 1,500 but was doubled to roughly 3,000 since 1994.In order to empirically assess the urban frustration argument I needed adataset with a measure of attitudes toward marijuana legalization as wellas measures of the ecological context in which survey respondents lived.Although the GSS included the necessary dependent variable, a measureof attitudes toward marijuana legalization, as well as the control variables

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I needed, it was not a sufficient dataset on its own. What the GSS lackedwere measures of ecological context, specifically, race-specific drug arrestrates and race-specific murder victimization rates. A dataset that includedadequate measures of both of these variables was not available. However,these variables were present in separate datasets available from the FBI.Therefore, I computed race-specific drug arrest rates from the FBI’s UCRArrest Records and race-specific murder victimization rates from the FBI’sSupplemental Homicide Reports prior to merging these data sources withthe GSS. I was able to successfully merge these three distinct data sourcesbecause I had applied for and obtained the restricted geographic codes forthe GSS. Specifically, to create the dataset I used, I merged the UCR arrestdata and the FBI Supplemental Homicide Report data with the GSS databy city, originating agency (ori: the reporting law enforcement agency), andyear for all years between 1990 and 2000. Although merging the three uniquedatasets used in the current study was time intensive, access to the restrictedgeographic codes made this process routine and uneventful. The end resultof merging these three data sources was a unique dataset where each surveyrespondent was assigned two contextual variables based on the city wherethey lived. First, the Black or White murder rate for each city was assigned toeach respondent to indicate the race-specific crime context in which each re-spondent lived. Second, the Black or White drug arrest rate for each city wasassigned to each respondent to indicate the extent of drug law enforcementin which each respondent lived. These two methodological procedures weretaken under the assumption that the average Black respondent and the aver-age White respondent will tend to live in racially segregated neighborhoods.The sample consists of GSS respondents for the years 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994,1996, 1998, and 2000 residing in cities with populations greater than or equalto 100,000. These procedures resulted in a total sample of 1,769 respondentsliving in 81 cities without missing data on all measures, 483 Blacks and 1,286Whites. The White sample was used as a reference category.

Dependent Variable

The dependent variable is support for marijuana legalization and is based onrespondents’ answer to the GRASS question in the GSS. Focusing the analyt-ical lens on attitudes toward the legalization of marijuana as the dependentvariable in this study is appropriate for three interrelated reasons: (a) mar-ijuana is widely considered to be the most benign of the currently illicitdrugs, (b) of all the currently illicit drugs marijuana stands the best chance ofactually becoming legalized at some point in the future, and (c) Blacks arebeing arrested for drug law violations at significantly disproportionate ratesas marijuana arrests become an ever greater proportion of overall drug ar-rests. The GRASS question asks: “Do you think the use of marijuana should be


FIGURE 4 Support for marijuana legalization among residents of large U.S. citiesa by race,1990–2000. Source: The National Opinion Research Center’s (NORC) General Social Surveys(GSS) 1990–2000; aLarge Cities ! 100,000; (White: N = 1153, t = 3.2476, p < .001); Correlationbetween support and year (Black: N = 483, r = .098, p < .05; White: N = 1286, r = .116,p < .001).

made legal or not?” Three options were provided, respondents could indicate(a) should, (b) should not, and (c) don’t know. This question has been askedby the NORC every survey year except 1974, 1977, 1982, and 1985. Thosewho selected “don’t know” were excluded from the sample given that theyaccounted for less than 5% of the total number of respondents and under theassumption that they would be equally likely to respond “should” or “shouldnot” if they had in fact made a decision. Most studies attempting to determinewhether individuals are supportive of marijuana legalization have generallyrelied on the GSS GRASS question or some derivation thereof (e.g., Lambert,Ventura, Baker, & Jenkins, 2006; Meares, 1997). Figure 4 shows how supportfor marijuana legalization between 1990 and 2000 for Blacks and Whitesvaried from year to year. It is clear that Blacks were less likely to sup-port marijuana legalization across the 11-year period, although both Blacks’and Whites’ support for marijuana legalization increased over this periodas well.

Independent Variables

The two primary independent variables are violent crime and drug mar-ket activity. These two variables are operationalized as race-specific murdervictimization rates and race-specific drug arrest rates, respectively. The ex-tant research on attitudes toward drug legalization indicates that several

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demographic variables are related to individuals’ views on this issue (T.J. Davis, 2005; Lambert et al., 2006; Mears, 1997). Therefore, I control forrespondents’ race, gender, education, family income, age, religious serviceattendance, and political ideology. Lastly, city size and year are incorporatedinto the model to control for the possibility that attitudes toward marijuanalegalization might be a function of the size of the city in which respondentsreside and year-to-year fluctuations in the level of support for marijuana le-galization, respectively. The race of respondents is measured using a dummyvariable coded: Black = 1 and White = 0. Social class is measured using twoseparate variables, the natural logarithm of family income and education inyears of school completed, both of which are continuous variables. Gen-der is measured using a dummy variable where female = 1 and male = 0.Age is measured in years using a continuous variable. Political liberalism ismeasured with a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (extremely conservative)to 7 (extremely liberal). City size is a continuous variable, rounded to thenearest thousand, indicating the population of each respondent’s city withgreater than or equal to 100,000 residents. Religiosity was operationalized asreligious service attendance and coded using two dummy variables: weeklyor more often = 1, else = 0, and monthly/semimonthly = 1, else = 0. Thereference category is never/almost never. The variable year identifies theGSS survey year.

Analytic Strategy

To test the urban frustration argument at the bivariate level I used two sep-arate t tests. At the multivariate level I employed binary logistic regressionto test whether changes in race-specific drug arrest rates and race-specificmurder victimization rates influenced respondents’ support for marijuana le-galization between cities. I also ran separate race-specific city fixed effectsmodels to determine whether changes in drug arrest rates and murder vic-timization rates influenced respondents’ support for marijuana legalizationwithin cities. I regressed support for marijuana legalization on the naturallogarithm of race-specific murder victimization rates and the natural loga-rithm of race-specific drug arrest rates for both Blacks and Whites, whilecontrolling for several demographic and structural variables. Also, to test forthe possibility that the effect of violent victimization and drug arrest rates onsupport for marijuana legalization was conditional on their respective levels,I incorporated multiplicative interaction terms into the full model. However,analyses indicated that there was no significant interaction effect betweenthe murder victimization rate and the drug arrest rate for both the Blacksample and the White sample. Lastly, to address city-level clustering withinthe data I used robust standard errors.


TABLE 1 Descriptive Characteristics of General Social Survey Respondentsa, 1990–2000b

Black White

Age 43.46 43.80Percent female 64.59 51.24Median family income $14,325.00 $23,563.00Education in years 12.43 13.92Political liberalismc 4.19 4.01Religious attendance (%)

Weekly or more often 31.06 21.07Monthly/semimonthly 30.02 19.67Never/almost never 38.92 59.25

Race-specific drug arrest rated per 100,000 2,447 836Race-specific murder victimization ratee per 100,000 47.97 13.27Support for marijuana legalization 26.71 34.06Mean city size 1,696,000 1,153,000

N = 483 N = 1,286

aResidents of cities !100,000. bData pooled for years 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994, 1996, 1998, and 2000.cPolitical liberalism: 1 = extremely conservative, 7 = extremely liberal. dFederal Bureau of Investigation’sUniform Crime Report (UCR) Arrest Records. eFederal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) SupplementalHomicide Reports.

RESULTS

The descriptive statistics for the GSS respondents are presented in Table 1.Nearly two-thirds of the Black sample is female, whereas White femalescomprise roughly half of the White sample. The difference in the medianfamily income between the Black and White samples is approximately$9,000. Whites, on average, have one and half more years of formal ed-ucation than the average Black respondent. Religious service attendance isalso more frequent among those in the Black sample with about one-thirdattending weekly or more often compared to one-fifth among Whites. Wealso see that those in the Black sample tend to reside in larger metropolitanareas. The means for the two primary independent variables, race-specificmurder victimization rates and race-specific drug arrest rates, are quite telling.The city-level Black drug arrest rate for the Black sample is 2,447. In otherwords, the average Black respondent lives in a city where for every 100,000Blacks there are 2,447 arrested for a drug law violation. The Black drug ar-rest rate is three times greater than the White drug arrest rate. The averageWhite respondent lives in a city where the White drug arrest rate is 836per 100,000. The differences in the race-specific murder victimization ratesare just as stark as those for drug arrests. The average Black respondentlives in a city where the Black murder victimization rate is 48 per 100,000.This figure is nearly fourfold greater (13 per 100,000) than the White murdervictimization rate in the cities where the average White respondent resides.These descriptive statistics paint a picture that is consistent with the liter-ature reviewed above showing that Blacks live in fundamentally different

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FIGURE 5 Support for marijuana legalization by race-specific drug arrest rates and race,1990–2000. Source: The National Opinion Research Center’s (NORC) General Social Surveys(GSS) 1990–2000 and Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Report (UCR) ArrestRecords; "Large Cities ! 100,000; (White: N = 650, t = #3.9702, p < .001; Black: N = 311,t = #2.9607, p < .001).

contexts than Whites. Though these are city-level characteristics, given whatwe know about racial residential segregation it is safe to assume that theaverage Black respondent lives in a neighborhood with demographic andecological characteristics similar to those highlighted in the city-level data.In contrast, a similar assumption can be made about the space in whichthe average White respondent resides. Specifically, urban Whites generallylive apart from the more disadvantaged Black city residents in neighbor-hoods geographically removed from the city center or in gentrified portionsof it. Lastly, as it pertains to the dependent variable, support for marijuanalegalization, the Black–White difference frequently found in survey data ispresent here as well. The level of support in the White sample is roughly7.5% greater than it is among the Black sample.

Figure 5 illustrates the difference in the level of support for marijuanalegalization between those residing in cities ranked in the 1st and 4th quartilein race-specific drug arrest rates for Whites and Blacks, respectively. Con-sidering first the statistics for Blacks we see that the level of support forlegalization among Blacks in cities ranking in the 4th quartile in Black drugarrest rates is nearly 80% greater than those residing in cities that rank inthe 1st quartile in Black drug arrest rates (33.5% vs. 18.9%). This differenceis statistically significant at the .001 level. This finding provides an initialchallenge to the urban frustration argument, at least at the bivariate level, asBlacks’ support for marijuana legalization is greatest in those cities with thehighest Black drug arrest rates. For comparison, if we shift our attention tothe statistics for Whites we observe that, like Blacks, their levels of support


for marijuana legalization covaries with the race-specific drug arrest rates ina direct fashion and is also a statistically significant finding. That is, in citieswith the highest levels of White drug arrest rates there is greater supporton the part of Whites for marijuana legalization. However, the increase insupport for marijuana legalization for Whites between those ranking in the1st and 4th quartile in White drug arrests is only slightly more than 50%;the comparable figure for Blacks is approximately 80%. So, at the bivariatelevel it appears that the effect of race-specific drug arrest rates on supportfor marijuana legalization is stronger among Blacks than among Whites. Thisfinding is consistent with Hypothesis 3, which predicts that the effect of therace-specific drug arrest rate should be greater among Blacks than amongWhites. Further investigation at the multivariate level will determine whetherthe effect is independent of other variables that might account for this dif-ference (e.g., gender, social class, age).

The bivariate relationship between support for marijuana legalizationand race-specific murder victimization is considered in Figure 6. Blacks liv-ing in cities in the highest quartile in Black murder victimization rates areslightly more likely to support the legalization of marijuana than those inthe lowest quartile (28.75 vs. 25.32%); however, the difference is not sta-tistically significant. Despite the failure to reach the threshold for statisticalsignificance this relationship runs counter to that predicted by the urbanfrustration argument. Blacks in cities with higher Black murder victimization

FIGURE 6 Support for marijuana legalization by race-specific murder victimization rates andrace, 1990–2000. Source: The National Opinion Research Center’s (NORC) General Social Sur-veys (GSS) 1990–2000 and The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Supplemental HomicideReports; "Large Cities !100,000; (White: N = 648, t = #1.5561, p = .0601; Black: N = 318,t = #0.6876, p = .2461).

126 T. E. Thornhill

rates are not less likely but, if anything, appear marginally more likely tosupport marijuana legalization. Considering the statistics for Whites we see asimilar pattern. Whites’ support for marijuana legalization is greater in thosecities with higher White murder victimization rates. The relationship betweensupport for marijuana legalization and the White murder victimization ratejust misses statistical significance. Interestingly, findings from Figure 6 alsoprovide disconfirming evidence for Hypothesis 4 (at least at the bivariatelevel), which states that the effect of the race-specific murder victimizationrate should be greater among Blacks than among Whites. Although small,the difference in support between Whites in cities in the 1st and 4th quartileof race-specific murder victimization rates is 5.8% compared to 3.4% amongBlacks. The investigation of these two bivariate relationships (i.e., supportfor marijuana legalization and race-specific drug arrest rates and support formarijuana legalization and race-specific murder victimization rates) providesus with two important initial findings. First, neither the race-specific drugarrest rate nor the race-specific murder victimization rate is inversely relatedto support for marijuana legalization as predicated by the urban frustrationargument. Second, it appears that the race-specific drug arrest rate is morestrongly related to support for marijuana legalization than the race-specificmurder victimization rate.

The logistic regression results for the Black sample are presented inTable 2. In Model 1, I test whether Blacks’ support for marijuana legalizationis related to the Black murder victimization rate and the Black drug arrest rate.The findings in Model 1 indicate that both primary independent variables arepositively related to support for marijuana legalization. However, only theBlack drug arrest rate is significantly related to support (p $ .001). The oddsof Blacks who reside in cities with higher Black drug arrest rates supportingmarijuana legalization are 1.956 times greater than Blacks in cities with lowerBlack drug arrest rates. This finding is contrary to that suggested by the urbanfrustration hypothesis.

Model 2 introduces a series of control variables to assess whether theBlack murder victimization rate and the Black drug arrest rate make anindependent contribution in explaining variation in support for marijuanalegalization among Blacks. The noncity fixed effect estimates presented inModel 2 indicate that, between cities, there is a positive and statisticallysignificant (p $ .05) relationship between the Black drug arrest rate andsupport for marijuana legalization among Blacks between 1990 and 2000.There was a moderate attenuation in the effect size of the Black drug arrestrate variable from .671 in Model 1 to .503 in Model 2; however, it remainspositively and significantly related to support for marijuana legalization. Theeffect of the Black murder victimization rate becomes more strongly andpositively related to support for marijuana legalization as indicated by thebeta coefficient increasing from .116 in Model 1 to .307 in Model 2; however,it remains slightly above the threshold necessary for statistical significance.


TABLE 2 Binary Logistic Regression Estimates of Black Support for Marijuana Legalizationfor Residents of U.S. Cities !100,000 (1990–2000)

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

Coefficient Coefficient Coefficient(in odds Odds (in odds Odds (in odds Odds

Variables ratio) Ratio ratio) Ratio ratio) Ratio

Violent crimeln Black murder .116 1.124 .307 1.360 .115 1.122

victimization ratea (.202) (.234) (.349)Drug arrests

ln Black drug arrest rateb .671""" 1.956 .503" 1.654 #.709 .491(.186) (.208) (.666)

Controlsc

Female #.156 .854 #.225 .797(.231) (.248)

Age #.018"" .982 #.024""" .975(.006) (.005)

Education in years #.025 .975 #.000 .999(.046) (.049)

ln Family income, 1986 $ #.041 .959 #.081 .921(.105) (.110)

Religious service attendanced

Weekly or more #.623" .536 #.547 .578(.272) (.197)

Monthly/semimonthly #.322 .724 #.396 .672(.264) (.297)

Political liberalism .104 1.110 .093 1.097(.076) (.106)

City size #.000 .999 #.000 .999(.000) (.001)

Year .064 1.066 .109 1.115(.040) (.047)

City fixed effects No No YesWald ! 2 12.99""" 34.34""" 55.27"""

Pseudo R2 .0228 .0599 .0621N 483 483 405

Note. Robust standard errors in parentheses.aFederal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Supplemental Homicide Reports. bFederal Bureau of Investiga-tion’s Uniform Crime Report (UCR) Arrest Records. cThe National Opinion Research Center’s (NORC)General Social Surveys (GSS). dReference category = Never/almost never."p < .05. ""p < .01. """p < .001 (two-tailed tests).

Both of these findings are the opposite of those predicted by the urban frus-tration argument. Also highlighted in Model 2 are two additional significantfindings that are consistent with previous research addressing attitudes to-ward marijuana legalization (Lambert et al., 2006; Mears, 1997); older Blacksand those who attend religious services most frequently have lower levelsof support than their younger and less frequent religious service attendingcounterparts.

128 T. E. Thornhill

TABLE 3 Binary Logistic Regression Estimates of White Support for Marijuana Legalizationfor Residents of U.S. Cities !100,000 (1990–2000)

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

Coefficient Coefficient Coefficient(in odds Odds (in odds Odds (in odds Odds

Variables ratio) Ratio ratio) Ratio ratio) Ratio

Violent crimeln White murder #.023 .976 .062 1.064 #.158 .853

victimization ratea (.075) (.086) (.219)Drug arrests

ln White drug arrest rateb .271""" 1.312 .054 1.056 #.176 .838(.070) (.084) (.260)

Controlsc

Female #.795""" .451 #.772""" .461(.134) (.150)

Age #.012"" .987 #.012"" .987(.004) (.004)

Education in years .064 1.066 .032 1.032(.058) (.058)

ln Family income, 1986 $ #.100 .904 #.057 .943(.101) (.118)

Religious service attendanced

Weekly or more #.931""" .394 #.829""" .436(.190) (.178)

Monthly/semimonthly #.598""" .549 #.587""" .555(.181) (.172)

Political liberalism .422""" 1.525 .417""" 1.51(.051) (.060)

City size .000 1.000 #.000 .999(.000) (.000)

Year .079""" 1.083 .080" 1.083(.021) (.037)

City fixed effects No No YesWald ! 2 17.51""" 178.13""" 242.11"""

Pseudo R2 .0108 .1430 .1370N 1,286 1,286 1,242

Note. Robust standard errors in parentheses.aFederal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Supplemental Homicide Reports. bFederal Bureau of Investiga-tion’s Uniform Crime Report (UCR) Arrest Records. cThe National Opinion Research Center’s (NORC)General Social Surveys (GSS). dReference category = Never/almost never."p < .05. ""p < .01. """p < .001 (two-tailed test).

Model 3 incorporates city fixed effects into the full Black model to testwhether within city changes in drug arrest rates and murder victimizationrates influence support for marijuana legalization. Although the negativecoefficient for the Black drug arrest rate is in the predicated direction, itdoes not meet the conventional threshold for statistical significance. TheBlack murder victimization coefficient is not statistically significant. Again,we find no compelling evidence for the urban frustration argument.

Table 3 presents the multivariate results for the White sample. InModel 1, I test whether Whites’ support for marijuana legalization is a


function of the White murder victimization rate and White drug arrest rate.The White murder victimization rate does not have a significant effect onWhites’ support for marijuana legalization. However, there is a significantpositive relationship between Whites’ support for marijuana legalization andthe White drug arrest rate. The odds of Whites’ residing in cities with higherWhite drug arrest rates supporting marijuana legalization are 1.312 timesgreater than Whites in cities with lower White drug arrest rates. Model 2includes the control variables so as to determine whether the effect of theWhite drug arrest rate will retain its independent contribution to Whites’support for marijuana legalization. Unlike in the Black sample where theeffect of the Black drug arrest rate remains statistically significant indepen-dent of the control variables, the introduction of the control variables intothe full White model reduces the effect of the White drug arrest rate to apoint where it is no longer statistically significant (M1: b = .271; M2: b =.054). Also, unlike the Black sample, most of the control variables are signif-icantly related to Whites’ level of support. This is at least partially due to thelarger size of the White sample. Among Whites, women, older individuals,those with lower incomes, and those who attend religious services morefrequently are significantly less likely to support marijuana legalization. Themore highly educated and politically liberal Whites’ are those most likely tosupport marijuana legalization. Finally, in Model 3, I utilize city fixed effectsto test whether within city changes in drug arrest rates and murder victim-ization rates influence support for marijuana legalization between 1990 and2000 among the White sample. There were, however, no significant city fixedeffects for the primary independent variables.

DISCUSSION

This examination of the effect of two structural variables, race-specific mur-der victimization rates and race-specific drug arrest rates, on Blacks’ andWhites’ level of support for marijuana legalization calls the urban frustra-tion argument into question. The urban frustration hypothesis suggests thatBlacks in communities with high levels of violent crime and drug marketactivity will be less supportive of marijuana legalization because it couldpotentially increase drug use and violent crime. Contrary to the theoreticalexpectations of the urban frustration argument, an ecological context charac-terized by high levels of violent crime and drug market activity does not havean attenuating effect on Blacks’ level of support for marijuana legalization.

My findings provide no support for the urban frustration argument; how-ever, the findings do point to an alternative explanation more consistent withthe arguments made by the many voices claiming that growing numbers ofurban Blacks are becoming fed up with the draconian drug law enforce-ment practices that unfold within their communities. That the Black murder

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victimization rate and the Black drug arrest rate are positively related toBlacks’ level of support for marijuana legalization appears to demonstratethat a significant proportion of Blacks in communities with high levels of vi-olent crime and drug market activity are less concerned with the possibilitythat drug use and violent crime might increase with marijuana legalizationbut rather more concerned with the impact of the massive number of Blacksbeing arrested for drug law violations. Also, as predicted in Hypotheses 3and 4, the effect of the race-specific drug arrest rate and the race-specificmurder victimization rate was more strongly related to Blacks’ level of sup-port for marijuana legalization than it was for Whites’ level of support. Thisfinding supports the proposition that the presence of drugs and violent crimein many Black communities throughout the United States influences Blacks’position on the issue of drug legalization in a way that it does not for Whitesdue to Whites’ generally more advantaged ecological context and more pos-itive interactions with, and views toward, law enforcement.

The implications of the findings showing greater support for marijuanalegalization among Blacks in cities with high rates of violent crime and highlevels of drug market activity are important for the following reason. It ap-pears that there is a sentiment among a significant portion of Black residentsin cities with high levels of violent crime and drug activity that the nega-tive impact of the drug war is more harmful than whatever negative effectscould potentially result from marijuana legalization. So, although there arecertainly some residents of urban Black communities that have adopted thepunitive “lock them up and throw away the key” mentality with regard tothose involved with drugs (Meares, 1997), there is no evidence that en-tire communities feel this way. The views of many urban Blacks are whatMeares (1997) describes as “complex”; they are frustrated with both the per-vasiveness of drugs but also the draconian drug law enforcement in theircommunities (Bobo & Thompson, 2006; Meares, 1997). So, although mosturban Blacks do not endorse drug use and drug market activity nor do theysupport harsh sentences for drug offenders, in fact many strongly believe thatthere is racial bias in drug law enforcement (Bobo & Johnson, 2004; Bobo &Thompson, 2006; Meares, 1997). Many residents of Black communities seemto want rehabilitation (Maguire, 2007), community policing (Forman, 2004;Meares, 2002), community antidrug efforts (R. C. Davis & Lurigio, 1996),and more racially just drug-sentencing laws (Bobo & Johnson, 2004; Bobo& Thompson, 2006). Should marijuana legalization be added to this list ofproposals supported by urban Blacks living in communities with high levelsof violent crime and drugs? As an early contribution in this direction it isa bit premature to provide a definitive answer in this regard; however, thisstudy provides some empirical evidence that increases in violent crime anddrug arrests in Black communities are generative of support for marijuanalegalization among Blacks.


Although I was able to empirically assess the urban frustration hypoth-esis by constructing a unique dataset, there are still several limitations. First,the only suitable dataset for the present study containing the dependentvariable of interest—attitudes toward marijuana legalization—was the GSS.However, the GSS uses a dichotomous measure of attitudes toward mari-juana legalization. It is possible that a more nuanced measure of individuals’attitudes toward marijuana legalization would complicate the way in whichtheir perceptions are related to the crime and drug law enforcement wherethey reside. And it is this type of understanding that could be concealedby simply asking individuals whether they support or oppose marijuanalegalization. Second, the current study is unable to speak to individuals’ atti-tudes toward the decriminalization of marijuana, a policy that may be morelikely to garner the necessary support required to pass drug law reform thanmarijuana legalization. Several states have recently decriminalized the pos-session of small amounts of marijuana for personal use (e.g., Massachusettsin 2008 and California in 2010) providing some evidence that this mightbe the case. Third, due to significant inconsistencies in the reporting of thespecific drugs for which individuals are arrested I was restricted to using anaggregate measure of overall race-specific drug arrests. The possibility existsthat the effect of the ecological variables used in the current study variessignificantly based on the proportion of arrests for specific types of drugs aswell as the proportion of drug arrests for possession, manufacturing, and/ordistribution.

Although this study has drawn attention to the important relationship be-tween support for marijuana legalization among Blacks and the drug arrestrates in the cities in which they reside, there is still need to further clar-ify this relationship. The race-specific drug arrest and race-specific murdervictimization data are for cities. So although the extent of racial residentialsegregation in metropolitan areas indicates that the overwhelming majority ofurban Blacks live in predominantly Black neighborhoods and communities,lower level data of this sort would allow for a more refined analysis. Futurestudies should consider drawing samples from lower ecological levels suchas neighborhoods, census tracts, or communities. Still, if anything, it wouldlikely strengthen the observed relationship if neighborhood level data wereavailable given that Black drug arrest rates and Black murder victimizationrates would be more concentrated. Furthermore, survey studies controllingfor whether residents have themselves been arrested for a drug law violationand have family and/or friends involved in the illegal drug economy mightbe fruitful as well, as these variables may mediate the relationship betweenrace-specific drug arrests and race-specific murder victimization rates andsupport for marijuana legalization.

Taken as a whole these findings provide no support for the urbanfrustration argument. Instead, there appears to be a war on drugs effect. Thatis, instead of increases in Black drug arrests and Black violent victimization

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engendering an antimarijuana legalization sentiment among urban Blacksas predicted by the urban frustration argument, it appears that they aresomewhat generative of support for marijuana legalization. Urban Blacksare not unaware of the real-life consequences that widespread drug arrests,particularly marijuana arrests, are having on their families and communities.It would seem as though whatever negative effects may follow from thelegalization of marijuana, being arrested for a marijuana law violation appearsa more problematic possibility.

NOTES

1. Arditti and McClintock, 2001; Banks, 1997; Duster, 1997; Mauer, 2006; Mauer and King, 2007;Nunn, 2002; Resignato, 2000; Tonry, 1994, 1995.

2. See for example, Bobo and Thompson, 2006; Calhoun, Parker, and Weaver, 1995; Lambert et al.,2006; Meares, 1997; Nunn, 2002; Timberlake, Lock, and Rasinski, 2003; Trevino and Richard, 2002.

3. Blumstein, 1995; Duster, 1997; Goode, 2002; Mauer, 2006; Meares, 1997, 1998; Nunn, 2002; Saxeet al., 2001; Tonry, 1995; Walker, Spohn, and DeLone, 2007.

4. See for example, Anderson, 1990, 1999; Bourgois, 2003; Patillo, 2005; Patillo-McCoy, 1999;Venkatesh, 2006; Venkatesh and Murphy, 2006; Wacquant, 2008.

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