Despite similar rates of marijuana use, blacks are still arrested at far higher rates than whites for cannabis. As of 2010, African Americans were 12% of the population in Connecticut, but accounted for more than 30% of marijuana possession arrests.
Marijuana prohibition’s history is rooted in racism. Harry Anslinger, commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, led the federal push for de facto prohibition, making virulently racist claims, such as, “Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men.”
Decades later, a top advisor to Richard Nixon explained, "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."