Nothing says hip-hop these days quite like an arrest. This fate has unfortunately descended, once again, on one of New Orleans’s own. Cash Money Records rapper and pride of the Big Easy Lil’ Wayne was arrested this past Wednesday on three felony drug charges at a checkpoint near Yuma in southwestern Arizona. The Border Patrol’s version of Lassie decided to alert DEA agents to the presence of illegal drugs on his tour bus, according to the Associated Press. A search of the bus found almost four ounces of marijuana, a little over an ounce of cocaine, 41 grams of ecstasy and miscellaneous drug paraphernalia. Lil’ Wayne – whose full name is Dwayne Michael Carter Jr. – was also the owner of a registered .40-caliber pistol found on the bus; Wayne has a concealed weapons permit in Florida. I’ve always hated Lassie. Don’t think the above statement is meant as anti-dog – if I get covered in red paint because of some nutjob from PETA, I’ll be anti-people for a while. But why, in the name of reality, was Lil’ Wayne’s bus searched? What else did you expect? Lil’ Wayne isn’t actively hurting anybody. He will never, ever show up on Dateline’s “To Catch a Predator,” Chris Hansen’s name be praised. He’ll never be found guilty of breaking international law, and no one will even remember this story six months from now. He has, however, registered no level of shock on my face. He’s only been rapping about smoking, snorting and pill-popping for the last nine years. This also isn’t the first time Weezy has been stopped by the long arm of the law. He was arrested in August 2006 in Georgia and charged with possession of marijuana and more than 100 Xanax and hydrocodone pills, preceding an arrest in Boise, Idaho, on a felony fugitive charge. Equating Wayne to Richard Kimball was only possible because of a paperwork error, as Wayne was told by his former lawyer the charges had been dropped. This past July, he was also arrested on gun-possession charges in New York just after his Big Apple debut at the Beacon Theatre. Wayne was arrested after police saw him smoking weed with another man, and police found the gun on his person. This wasn’t an hour after Murder Inc. rapper Ja Rule was arrested on a similar charge. Both weapons were .40-caliber pistols. The relevance of this story lies in America’s long-standing tradition of seeking to place all reason for the War on Drugs solely on minorities. Most current illicit drug users are white, according to a 1998 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse. There were an estimated 9.9 million whites (72 percent of all users), 2.0 million blacks (15 percent), and 1.4 million Hispanics (10 percent) who were illicit drug users in 1998. And yet, blacks constitute 36.8 percent of those arrested for drug violations, over 42 percent of those in federal prisons for drug violations. African-Americans comprise almost 58 percent of those in state prisons for drug felonies; Hispanics account for 20.7 percent. The JFA Institute, a Washington, DC criminal justice think tank, released a study this past November that found – according to the US Department of Justice – approximately 30 to 40 percent of all current prison admissions involve crimes that have no direct or obvious victim other than the perpetrator. The report goes on to conclude that violence surrounding drug trafficking in the United States is largely absent in Western European countries that have liberalized their drug possession policies. For those of you worried about your money this tax season, the decriminalization of illicit drugs coupled with enacting modest reforms in sentencing and parole, as speculated in the report, would save taxpayers an estimated $20 billion per year by reducing the prison population from 1.5 million to below 700,000. Do you begin to notice a theme building here? Now, don’t confuse these statistics as the end-all, be-all proof that drugs are good. Do not draw this conclusion. I’m merely pointing out, with the help of statistics gathered by my own government, the uselessness of spending time prying into nonviolent citizens’ respective businesses. At the same time, as I type this, I find myself listening to Eminem’s “The Marshall Mathers LP,” as Slim Shady walks into his agent’s office. The agent heatedly offers a comparison between Eminem and Dr. Dre, yelling: “Do you know why Dre’s records were so successful? He’s rapping about big-screen TV’s, blunts, 40’s and bitches.” In conclusion, someone should set Lassie free. Lil’ Wayne isn’t a violent human being – though, being from New Orleans he has every right to be – but getting busted on victimless drug charges shouldn’t surprise anyone considering every platinum-certified reason to search Lil’ Wayne has given to the masses. And by the way, he’s still the best rapper alive.
—-Contact Eric Freeman Jr. at [email protected]