From the ACLU and my home studio in my closet, this is at Liberty.

I'm Emerson Sykes, a staff attorney here at the ACLU and your host.

Public opinion on marijuana legalization has shifted in recent years.

Roughly two-thirds of all Americans are now in favor of national legalization,

according to a recent Pew Research Study. However, a new ACLU report called A Tale of Two Countries,

racially targeted arrests in an era of marijuana reform, shows that despite legalization and

decriminalization efforts, many of them successful,

marijuana arrests continue. Black people are 3.64 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana

possession than a white person. According to the FBI, in 2018, police made more marijuana

arrests than for all violent crimes combined.

Joining us on the podcast today are two people who've been focused on marijuana legalization and racial equity. They are both working to ensure that when legalization or decriminalization

measures pass, the black and brown communities that are hardest hit by prohibition are not

left out of the legal cannabis industry.

First, we'll hear from Dominique Cornell, a young activist from Illinois whose life has been

deeply impacted by marijuana arrests. Then I'll speak with Zeke Edwards, the director of the ACLU's

criminal law reform project and a lead author of the new report. So marijuana arrests and the war on drugs in general is not an abstraction for me.

I have been incarcerated myself for cannabis.

And as a child, I lost my mother to drugs and addiction.

And my father was part of the drug trade,

and I lost him to incarceration as well.

This is Dominique Coronel, a college student from the suburbs of Chicago.

Drug criminalization has created immense disruption in his life.

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