mar1juana Arrests at All-Time High, Far Exceed Violent Crime Arrests

mar1juana Arrests at All-Time High, Far Exceed Violent Crime Arrests 10/29/04
The FBI reported Saturday that the number of arrests for violations of the mar1juana laws hit an all-time high of 755,186 in 2003. Despite a decade of mar1juana law reforms and protestations by police chiefs across the land that mar1juana is not a priority, that figure is nearly double the number of people arrested for pot in 1993. The number of people arrested on mar1juana charges last year also exceeds the number arrested for violent crimes by more than 150,000.

With only a couple of hiccups, the number of people arrested on mar1juana charges has trended steadily upward in the past decade, no matter which party controls the levers of government. The previous peak of 735,500 was recorded in 2000, with 724,000 arrested in 2001 and 697,000 in 2002.

To illustrate the scope of the problem, the number of those arrested for mar1juana is more than the entire population of the state of South Dakota (pop. 754,844). Or, for those for whom it is too easy to picture South Dakota as a empty wasteland, the number of pot arrests is greater than the populations of San Francisco (pop. 751,682), Jacksonville (pop. 735,617), or Columbus (pop. 711,470).

As has been the case in past years, the vast majority of mar1juana arrests -- some 88% -- were for simple possession. Arrests for mar1juana offenses constituted a whopping 45% of all drug arrests.

The numbers appeared in the FBI's annual Uniform Crime Report and were grist for the mill for pro-reform organizations. "With mar1juana arrests exceeding 750,000 a year, it's safe to say that the drug war isn't preventing people from using mar1juana," said Rob Kampia, executive director of the mar1juana Policy Project (http://www.mpp.org) in Washington, DC. "It's time to acknowledge this reality by taxing and regulating mar1juana. A responsible system of regulation will do a better job of keeping mar1juana away from kids and end the pointless persecution of adults who use mar1juana responsibly."

"These numbers belie the myth that police do not target and arrest minor mar1juana offenders," said Keith Stroup, Executive Director of the National Organization for the Reform of mar1juana Laws (http://www.norml.org), who noted that at current rates, a mar1juana smoker is arrested every 42 seconds in America. "This effort is a tremendous waste of criminal justice resources, costing American taxpayers approximately $7.6 billion dollars annually. These dollars would be better served combating serious and violent crime, including the war on terrorism."

While simple mar1juana possession offenses typically draw light punishment, such as fines or suspended sentences, except in the most conservative or rural jurisdictions, the consequences of a mar1juana arrest or conviction go far beyond having to pay a fine or submit to probationary drug testing. "Some people are lucky and just get a slap on the wrist," said Bruce Mirken, MPP director of communications. "But we also have horrifying cases like that of Jonathan Magbie, who died in the Washington, DC, jail earlier this month while serving a 10-day mar1juana sentence. Or the young man in Florida who was raped in jail while serving a weekend sentence for a minor mar1juana violation. One case like either of those is one case too many," he told DRCNet. "There is simply no rational reason why we should subject people to that sort of risk for private adult responsible use of a substance that is well-documented to be less harmful than alcohol."

While horror stories like that of Jonathan Magbie are thankfully the exception rather than the rule, everyone convicted of a mar1juana crime is subject to a raft of continuing punishments beyond those exacted by the criminal justice system. "It can literally haunt them for the rest of their lives," said Mirken. "They lose access to federal benefits, they lose job opportunities because of the arrest record, they can't get student loans." According to the US Department of Education, over 150,000 college students or would-be students have lost access to federal financial aid because of drug crimes, the vast majority of them for simple mar1juana possession.

"The bottom line," said Mirken, "is that none of this makes any sense. Even if people think we should be trying to curb mar1juana use, arresting all these people hasn't done that, either."

While some 662,886 people were charged with simple mar1juana possession, an additional 92,301 were charged with the more serious offense of "sale/manufacture." That number includes all those arrested for selling or growing mar1juana, even those who were growing for their own use or for medical reasons.

While mar1juana arrests are a large part of the drug war, they are by no means all of it. According to the FBI, nearly a million (923,006) people were arrested on other drug charges, with the vast majority of those being for simple possession. The Uniform Crime Report notes that the overall trend in all drug arrests is up 22% since 1994.

The number of drug arrests in 2003 (1,678,192) was greater than for any other major crime category. All property crimes combined totaled 1,605,127 arrests, while all violent crimes combined totaled 597,026. The number of drug arrests was also greater than the number of driving while intoxicated arrests (1,448,148) or the seemingly popular offense of simple assault (1,246,698). Drug arrests made up 12.3% of all arrests nationwide.

To read the FBI's 2003 Uniform Crime Report, visit http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/03cius.htm online.

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/360/arrests.shtml

 

Should mar1juana possession be such a big priority that we arrest over 650,000 people in one year for choosing an intoxicant that is natural, safer than alcohol, and has been used by at least half of the people in this country born since 1954 (numbers based on high school surveys that started in 1972)?

We can reduce the access that our young people have more effectively by regulating this drug and we can turn around the massive financial drain ($7.4 billion per year just for arrest, prosecution, and incarceration of offenders per the article) by taxing the sales.

We need to protect our children instead of putting drugs directly into their hands as the current policy does.

 

At this point, it will take a LOT. There are many industries that actively lobby against mar1juana regulation and they are as diverse as textiles and petrochemical companies, to say nothing of the pharmaceutical industry (who, together with the alcohol industry are the primary funding for the "Partnership for a Drug Free America" ).

It is going to take a ton of work, but it is the right thing to do. After all the research that has been done over the past century, after all of the things we have seen about how drugs work on the body, it is time to have a drug policy that is based on science rather than politics.

We already allow recreational drugs, over the counter in alcohol and tobacco and prescriptions like Xanex and Valium. It is time to face the facts and classify ALL drugs the same way. There is no such thing as a drug that takes over a victim like a demon possession.

Addiction is a very predictable disease that can be easily foreseen with computers looking at the buying habits of the users. We can have meaningful impact on addiction rates only when we can actually see the addiction rates and track the trends. This can only be accomplished by regulating sales, which would have the added benefit of making it much harder for minors to acquire.

It is insane to spend the amounts of money we do on arresting people for smoking a plant that is completely natural, has never been documented to kill a single person, and is benign as we are now aware that mar1juana is. We need to take precautions, as with any drug, but those precautions should not include arresting over 650,000 people in one year for simple possession.

 

Arresting people for mar1juana use has not ever resulted in lower rates of use. In fact, when you look at the studies that have been done, people who go to jail for mar1juana use almost without exception come out of jail in far worse shape.

Besides, you are acting like every single person who smokes pot goes on to harder drugs inevitably. This is definitively not true as evidenced by the fact that rates of use of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, MDMA, and every other drug are far lower than rates of use for pot. In fact, people who reported ever using crack or heroin (the two drugs most likely to result in or otherwise create violent crime) were 3.6 and 1.6% respectively in 2002, which is tiny compared to the 40.4% who reported ever having used mar1juana. Clearly, your assumption that mar1juana inevitably leads to harder drug use is mistaken.

(statistics taken from http://www.drugwarfacts.org/druguse.htm)

I have done the research and have not seen that particular statistic. Please refer me to your source as I have and then we will talk about how you are really putting the cart before the horse. 40% of the population at large reports using mar1juana at some point and it makes perfect sense that people on the wrong side of the law will use drugs at a higher rate than the average American. Then add in the fact that violent criminals usually have a nonviolent record before they commit a violent crime and you are talking about some of the most criminalistic among us. Of course they are going to have a lot of contact with an industry that has been forced into the criminal underground as the drug trade has.

Once we regulate the industry, criminals will not have anything at all to do with the drug trade as legitimate business people are far more trustworthy. We will be able to get drugs out of the hands of our children, but the only way to do it will be to regulate the industry.

 

Most people get far more impaired from a night of drinking than anyone gets from smoking pot. On your second point, far more people have ruined their lives over alcohol than could ever do so over pot. The real point is that adults should have the right to choose for themselves what goes into their bodies. A (wo/)man's choice of intoxicants is a personal one that should be left up to the individual.

It sounds like what you are saying here is to take cops off of traffic duty and put them on violent crimes and I am with you on that.

However, how many real crimes do you think the police could solve if they could keep the same staffing levels but they didn't have to concern themselves with drugs at all? That would be possible with the influx of cash that would some in the form of tax revenues.

 

Once again, you show your willingness to throw logic away. Actually, the VAST majority of those people started with tobacco and alcohol even before they started with mar1juana. One does not necessarily lead to the other. Some people have highly addictive personalities and others simply have reactions to certain chemicals. We can resolve those issues more effectively in a regualted market than we can by attempting to incarcerate our way out of this problem.

Yes, and it would be a much better system if it could identify these problem users before they even become a problem. Addiction is a very predictable disease with clear warning signs. These warning signs are forced underground because drugs are illegal where in a regulated market, you could track sales and actually identify problem use and target treatment and prevention at the user in question.

And what we are debating here is not what the status quo is, we are debating whether the status quo is the appropriate strategy given the facts. It is very clear that prohibition, is not sustainable as a long term policy, particularly given the spectacular failure of said policy to keep drugs out of the hands of our children. Children now report that illegal drugs are easier to acquire than alcohol and that is an absolute travesty.

 

We are talking about jailing over 650,000 people last year for simple possession. That is five people every four minutes arrested for possession of a drug that has never been documented to kill even a single person.

We are spending so much money on this issue that it is difficult to back up the statement that "cops really don't care that much about weed." You may be right that some don't, but you don't get five people arrested every four minutes for possession if the cops don't care about it. Besides, some cops not caring (or caring only if you pi$$ed them off somehow) is actually a worse situation since now you are getting into the realm of selective enforcement, one of the main reasons that over 80% of the people in jail for drug "crimes" are minorities.

Prohibition has increased the availability of drugs to our children, has increased the violence inherent in the system, and has wasted more money than any other program in the history of our country. It is time for a change.

 

50% of high school students report having used an illegal drug before they graduate, so the percentage will only go up from there.