#menthols

The date is May 12th, 2021 and “tough on crime” mass incarceration laws—written almost 30 years ago by Joe Biden and championed by Bill & Hillary Clinton—are still having a disproportionately harsher impact on Black people. Precisely as was intended when those laws were written. This IS NOT something that happened “a long time ago,” and it isn’t something we can shove into this safe space called “the past.” The war-on-drugs and three-strikes laws are still breaking up families and impacting living breathing people, right now today. And so far, Joe Biden still refuses to decriminalize marijuana, but he has instead begun the process of criminalizing menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars, which are historically used disproportionately by …. you guessed it …. Black people.