A Vice News investigation has uncovered startling numbers indicating black and indigenous weed smokers are arrested at higher rates than other groups since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took office in 2015. The number of arrests were according to police data collected. 

“This data is so powerful because it confirms the speculation or the idea that Canada’s war on drugs has been so heavily racialized,” Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, a University of Toronto criminologist, told VICE News. “We can literally see from coast to coast that there are pretty stark racial differences in terms of who is arrested for minor cannabis possession.”

In many cities around Canada, data show the gap between black and aboriginal arrests compared to whites. Indigenous weed smokers in Regina, Saskatchewan, were nearly nine times more likely to be arrested according to data from 2015-17. Black users, on the other hand, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, were more than five times likely to be arrested than their white counterparts. 

“We know that rates of cannabis use are relatively similar across racial groups. So the fact that specific groups have been disproportionately targeted for drug law enforcement, especially black and Indigenous populations, strengthens that need for amnesty and for pardons,” Owusu-Bempah explained. “Because those groups have not only been disproportionately targeted, they have been disproportionately harmed by the consequences of having a criminal record.”
In Ottawa, Canada's capital, black people comprise 6.3 percent of the city’s population but constitute 22 percent of weed-related arrests. Ottawa Police spokesperson Carole Lavigne said the department has acknowledged the disproportionate arrest rate and has implemented an “anti-racial profiling policy review” to fix the issue— among other measures such as instituting "a new Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Officer."
Cannabis-friendly Vancouver also has some of the same issues. According to the report, the city has a black population of 1.2 percent, but in recent years the arrests were two to three times the population. In 2017, five percent of weed arrests were of black people. 
Marijuana-Legalizationweed culture