The stage lights were out, and all was dark. As the opening chord lingered, in the darkness I could see thousands of little firefly lighters sparking tiny fires throughout the seating area. Five seconds later, the stage lights stabbed into the darkness, illuminating a huge, ghostly, glowing sphere of smoke, a great exhalation by collected pot-ravaged lungs, a huge white bonfire cloud hanging over the audience, spilling over into the stage, dispersing into the atmosphere, THC mixed with body-waste carbon dioxide. All was good.

In the second instance, I was standing on the hot asphalt of the Orange Show, and 4:20 was tantalizingly near. I was in front of the main stage of Smokeout, a music festival dedicated to the sweet sounds of hip-hop and the sweet smell of blessed cannabis.

Surrounding me were b-boys, ravers, a few hippies, and alcohol ravaged ex-hippies, and they were all frantically preparing their bowls, bongs, joints, blunts as though they were at the front lines of a battle about to be waged between the subversive, revolutionary forces of Cannabis Smoke and the boring, oppressive forces of Oxygen. B-Real from Cypress Hill came onto the stage, and he exhorted the crowd: "It’s almost 4:20! When 4:20 comes around, all you muthafukas better be BLAZING!" The crowd went wild. It was a special moment, and I swear tears came to my eyes, though they may have been due to some smoke drifting from the people to my left who had sparked up a little too early. Five minutes later, the magic moment arrived.

The lighters sparked, the matches leapt into flame, the chronic sizzled, the dank cooked, the schwag popped, and, finally, the lungs sucked. Soon all the people around me were puffing their hearts away, sucking in the mild-altering substances, holding smoke in their lungs until their faces turned a fine shade of baby blue, and then exhaling dancing, skittering clouds of smoke. After that, a little bit of coughing, hacking, choking, but mostly a mere clearing of the throat, a grin of satisfaction, and quickly red-rimmed eyes. I looked up, and, yes, I kid you not, I could have sworn that I was experiencing a San Francisco morning when the fog rolls in from the ocean and a fine white haze hangs over everything, permeating everything, sticking to your clothing, finding its pervasive way into your nostrils and lungs. In that windless moment the cloud of smoke hung over the audience like a sanctifying coronic halo, throwing itself over everyone like a huge security blanket. All was good.

Two excellent shows. Two great clouds of smoke. Yet, at the Phish show, I was happy and free. At the Smokeout, I was vaguely bad-tempered. It all started with the security checks at the entrances to the shows. The actions of the crowds approaching the entrances were largely the same. People were putting their cannabis and smoking paraphernalia into hidden pockets, body cavities, crevices, pouches, bags, cheeks, you name it. People were nervously waiting in line for the security personnel to frisk them.

The differences started when the crowds hit security. When I went through security at Phish show, I was frisked briefly, winked at, and sent on my merry way. The rest of the crowd passed through in a similar fashion. Large bags were searched on occasion, but the basic rule was that if it didn’t bulge, it wouldn’t be found. The Orange Show security for Smokeout was completely different. A poor fellow a few spaces ahead of me was discovered to possess a bag full of beautiful green clippings. He was led away in handcuffs by one of the police plentifully sprinkled around the entrance area. My own peace officer went through my clothing obsessively, muttering "I know you got shit on you," and found all of the cigarettes I had strategically hidden throughout my body (yes, they don’t let you bring cigarettes into the Orange Show, though they do conveniently sell packs of Marlboros for five dollars! How nice of them!). He was especially fascinated by my wallet, saying, "Ah-ha!" when he pulled it out of my pocket. He was sort of frustrated when he found nothing in it, but what can you do? There was a mobile jail outside of Smokeout, which quickly filled to capacity. At the Phish show there was some security and one or two cops, while at Smokeout there were enough cops to empty a dozen doughnut shops.

The huge security disparity between the two shows got me to thinking. Sure, last year’s Smokeout had a few incidents of violent interpersonal combat, and sure, the Orange Show is notorious for its nasty security policies, but if the security officers were truly interested in keeping weapons out of the event, then why did they perform such thorough searches? I certainly didn’t have a stash of firearms in my wallet, nor in the cuff of my pantleg (though I may very well have things there that could have been fired up). No, it was very clear that the Orange Show cops were trying to arrest as many people as possible for drug possession, while the Phish security didn’t seem to care one way or the other.

Do I have a theory as to why this was? Yes. The Phish crowd was predominately white. The Smokeout crowd was mainly composed of Latinos, African-Americans, and a small minority of whites. Both crowds were at the events for the purpose of smoking weed and listening to music. Both crowds probably possessed the same amount of drugs. Yet, it was the minority-dominated crowd that the police cracked down on.

According to Marc Mauer of the Sentencing Project, an institution researching civil disparities in our nation’s prison population, in 1997 African Americans constituted 13 percent of all drug users, yet represented 35 percent of arrests for drug possession, 55 percent of convictions, and 74 percent of prison sentences. In the period between 1986 and 1991, the number of African Americans imprisoned for drug offenses rose by 465 percent. Meanwhile, during the same time period, 66,000 African-American drug offenders were arrested, compared to 15,000 Caucasian drug offenders. Nonviolent African-Americans, by these statistics, were arrested, convicted, and incarcerated at a much higher percentage than nonviolent Caucasian offenders. Latinos are arrested at slightly lower rates than African-Americans, but much more frequently than Caucasians.

The war on drugs systematically targets members of minority groups, especially the economically disadvantaged residents of inner cities. According to Mauer, 20 out of 100 inner city drug users are arrested for possession, while five out of 100 suburban or rural drug users are ever arrested. When drug-use initiatives are penned by Congress, they often target inner cities as sites of police crackdown while targeting suburban or rural areas as places where parents should tell their kids to "just say no."

Clearly, the war on drugs is not a systematic attempt to remove drug use from the face of this nation. If the authorities wish to remove drugs from the hands of all drug users, then why is it the urban minorities who are predominately targeted? Why, for instance, will the government fund new efforts to root out inner city users and dealers while drug-use havens such as Berkeley, or even Pomona College, go untouched? A police raid of this campus would surely result in a number of arrests, and quite a few of our fellow students would end up having to receive their homework assignments through a Plexiglas wall at the county jail.

Yet such raids are unheard of. Campus Safety, contrary to popular opinion, makes it their business to keep students from being arrested on drug charges. Students with drug problems are quietly shuttled away on leaves of absence or put in counseling. Huge safety nets protect the reputation of this college from being dragged through the dirty publicity of drugs. Why is this the case? Pomona College is a rich school. Our students are going on to become the pillars of society. The movers. The shapers. The creators. Our students will be making the policy, not receiving it. It would be counterproductive to put them in jail. Jails were not designed to hold those who go to Pomona College. Meanwhile, according to the dialogues going on in this country, inner city minorities are the dark, embarrassing underside of the glorious United States.

A seething mass of violence and discontent, we fear them and want to put them away. Inner-city minorities don’t necessarily use more drugs, but it seems natural that they would, doesn’t it? It seems fair and right when Bill Clinton announces a new initiative to step up drug policing in Los Angeles and New York, while a new drug policing initiative in Little Rock would seem a tad strange. Racial and economic discourse is insidious in the way it naturalizes government oppression. Phish kids are peaceful hippies. The hip-hop crowd is urban and violent. Arrest the hip-hop crowd!

We see the effects of the drug war every day. Even on this campus (irrationally and incorrectly seen by a great number of students as some sort of unreal, world-denying "bubble") we see the drug war through its very absence. We all need to see the drug war for what it is: a systematic attempt by society to police, criminalize, and incarcerate large portions of our marginalized groups.