The problem isn't the law. The problem is the selective enforcement. It's the selective suspicion. It's the selective police state.
Do you honestly believe that some cop in white suburbia is going to care about loose cigarettes? No way.
But that doesn't really matter anyways. I thought we were talking about not throwing people in jail and giving them criminal records for petty crimes. If a black guy gets in trouble for, say, selling loose cigarettes, is he supposed to feel better knowing that if a white guy in a different neighborhood did the same thing, that guy would be getting in trouble too? Is that really the best we can do here? I'd rather try and find a way to not throw him in jail in the first place.
You're just upset you got called on a false dichotomy.
It seems like it's kind of a trap. If you agree with the frame of the article, then you have to conclude that either 1. We passed those laws to make our neighborhoods better, but minorities and the lower classes don't deserve that, so we should ignore some set of laws there, and that totally won't become apartheid or 2. Maybe all of these nanny-state laws made by wannabe social engineers aren't such a good idea after all, since they give the Government too much arbitrary power to be enforced on whoever they don't like this week, so we should repeal them and tell people to mind their own business when they come up with this stuff.