They were joined by Ana Moreno, co-founder of Family Recovery Specialists, which specializes in addiction prevention and treatment. Ms. Moreno discussed the health concerns surrounding the use of marijuana as well as the costs of addiction treatment in regard to tobacco and alcohol, while Mr. Simon focused on the cruelty of denying treatment to patients in pain, the public policy and racial issues of incarceration and the resources spent to prosecute marijuana use.
Referring to
the ACLU’s 2013 report on how marijuana laws are enforced in a racially-biased way , Simon described the discrepancies in the rates of incarceration between African-American and white citizens. Nationwide, African-Americans are nearly four times as likely to be arrested for marijuana possession. That number jumps to 5.4 times in Miami-Dade County and as much as 10 times in other parts of Florida.
“The consequences of having a criminal justice approach as opposed to a public health approach have really crippled this country,” Simon said, to which both Ms. Aguirre Ferré and Ms. Moreno enthusiastically agreed.