Black and minority ethnic parents are more likely than their white counterparts to stop and frisk to cut down on cannabis, new research has found.
The survey of more than 1,000 parents found that 80 percent of black and minority ethnic families believe police should use stop-and-frisk to help remove cannabis from sale or use on the streets, compared with 70 percent of whites parents.
They are also more likely to support a tough government approach to cannabis and for schools to routinely test older children for the drug, according to a Deltapoll survey for the Civitas think tank.
Frank Young, editorial director of Civitas, said: “This research blows away the idea that stop-and-frisk or the director’s crackdown on cannabis is somehow unpopular with black and minority ethnic communities.”
Other experts suggest that this may be evidence of a stricter cultural approach to discipline by ethnic minority parents and a greater awareness of the potential links of drugs to violence.
Seventy percent of black or minority ethnic parents said they were worried about their children taking cannabis, compared with 47 percent of white families. They are also more likely to oppose legalization, 42% to 32%.
“Cannabis may have a more central cultural role in some communities than in others. So that’s a possibility. Another is that there can be quite strict discipline in ethnic minority homes that is perhaps lacking in white families,” said Simon Harding, professor of criminology at the University of West London.
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