Marijuana.com

Lothar121

Marijuana Arrests For Year 2005 -- 786,545 Tops Record High... Pot Smokers Arrested In America At A Rate Of One Every 40 Seconds
NORML | NORML | 09/18/2006

Washington, DC: Police arrested an estimated 786,545 persons for marijuana violations in 2005, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's annual Uniform Crime Report, released today. The total is the highest ever recorded by the FBI, and comprised 42.6 percent of all drug arrests in the United States.

"These numbers belie the myth that police do not target and arrest minor marijuana offenders," said NORML Executive Director Allen St. Pierre, who noted that at current rates, a marijuana smoker is arrested every 40 seconds in America. "This effort is a tremendous waste of criminal justice resources that diverts law enforcement personnel away from focusing on serious and violent crime, including the war on terrorism."

Of those charged with marijuana violations, approximately 88 percent some 696,074 Americans were charged with possession only. The remaining 90,471 individuals were charged with "sale/manufacture," a category that includes all cultivation offenses even those where the marijuana was being grown for personal or medical use. In past years, roughly 30 percent of those arrested were age 19 or younger.

"Present policies have done little if anything to decrease marijuana's availability or dissuade youth from trying it," St. Pierre said, noting young people in the U.S. now frequently report that they have easier access to pot than alcohol or tobacco.

The total number of marijuana arrests in the U.S. for 2005 far exceeded the total number of arrests in the U.S. for all violent crimes combined, including murder, manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault.

Annual marijuana arrests have more than doubled since the early 1990s.

"Arresting hundreds of thousands of Americans who smoke marijuana responsibly needlessly destroys the lives of otherwise law abiding citizens," St. Pierre said, adding that over 8 million Americans have been arrested on marijuana charges in the past decade. During this same time, arrests for cocaine and heroin have declined sharply, implying that increased enforcement of marijuana laws is being achieved at the expense of enforcing laws against the possession and trafficking of more dangerous drugs.

St. Pierre concluded: "Enforcing marijuana prohibition costs taxpayers between $10 billion and $12 billion annually and has led to the arrest of nearly 18 million Americans. Nevertheless, some 94 million Americans acknowledge having used marijuana during their lives. It makes no sense to continue to treat nearly half of all Americans as criminals for their use of a substance that poses no greater - and arguably far fewer - health risks than alcohol or tobacco. A better and more sensible solution would be to tax and regulate cannabis in a manner similar to alcohol and tobacco."

YEAR MARIJUANA ARRESTS

2005 786,545
2004 771,608
2003 755,187
2002 697,082
2001 723,627
2000 734,498
1999 704,812
1998 682,885
1997 695,200
1996 641,642
1995 588,963
1994 499,122
1993 380,689
1992 342,314
1991 287,850
1990 326,850

For more information, please contact Allen St. Pierre, NORML Executive Director, at (202) 483-5500. For a comprehensive breakdown and analysis of US marijuana arrests, please see NORML's report: "Crimes of Indiscretion: Marijuana Arrests in the United States," at: Crimes of Indiscretion - NORML.

 

xxdr_zombiexx

First, from my blog posting at the NEW SmirkingChimp.comNow a comment I made regarding this:Cannabis reformers SHOULD have accounts at Daily Kos and the new SmirkingChimp and they SHOULD be writing good blog-style posts - if they can - as well as finding/seeking out cannabis threads at both sites to make comments and to "rate them up".

Especially at DKos, the goal should be launching cannabis articles (I despise the term "diary") into the "Recommended Diaries" list. DKos gets so much traffic - the cannabis reformer should take advantage of this and we should seek to help each other with this.

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Alien Space Signal

There's no money for your issue so long as we're squandering $50 billion a year on the DrugWar. Ben Masel

Fear became the ultimate tool of this government - V.

walstmonky

Please let's offer to let the cops keep their current level of funding if they'll agree to quit opposing legalization. So there are some extra cops for the next few years or decades. We can put them to work inspecting the freshness of the local donut supply and everyone's happy.

^_^truth

I am just going to say that this is preaching to the choir. If the movement for marijuana legalization want to use this as a means of demonstrating the utter stupidity of prohibiation of a drug that is, in many respects, less harmfull than alcohol , we are going to need the cash to make this a top news subject.

We have the information that shows that lovly mj isn't what it is said to be, and that the costs of enforcing the laws related to it are silly, if not abusive, the problem is we don't have any drive (money) to poplularitized these facts.

Let us all spread this as word of mouth until the many join in.

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Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
Nietzsche

xxdr_zombiexx

A long time ago I would agree with you, but it's not how the police work.

Certainly there are plenty of cops who know this is bullshit, who will cop the plea (ok...snark intended) that they are just doing their jobs to feed their families , etc...

The problem is the numbers: If cops were not arresting somebody for cannabis touching every 40 seconds, what would they be doing?

Can they be re-tasked?

I think the DEA, for example, should be totally dissolved and thier employees can be absorbed by various terrorism efforts such as the Sky Marshall program

But at the cop-on-the-street level, is there really enough work to justify all those extra cops?

In their fervor to arrest potheads, are they neglecting real crimes?

I think so, but to what extent.

Theyare known to have "cooked their books" so it's genuinely hard to say that they have really focused on REAL crime as they have fervently enforced the ideology of Reefer Madness. Again, in 2005 Law Enforcement - not further specified - arrested more cannabis touchers than all other violent crime perpetrators combined.

That's a hard number and a hard reality to explain away.

Unless they are lying about how many potheads they arrested, which I doubt.

Cops will have to be coerced with the fear of losing their jobs in order to get them to stop pursuing cannabis culture with a religious fervor.

And they should NEVER be allowed to participate in the law-making process.

Can you say "conflict of Interest"?In this case Law Enforcement has a conflicted interest in cannabis prohibition because it is a sure route to ever-increasing budgets. Sort of like Doctors working for Insurance companies to make sure doctors get paid better for this or that.

 

xxdr_zombiexx

Probably the single biggest issue with a pro-cannabis website is the issue of preaching to the choir. Most of the folks who come here, outside of the DEA and FBI (and probably DHS) thugs assigned to "monitor" sites for whatever they think they will find, are already pro-reform types or people seeking some sort of information from an admittedly biased site.

And there's little worng with that, except the beautiful arguments presented here aren't seen by the people who need to see them.

This is why I will be strongly encouraging people HERE to register at sites like Daily Kos and Smirking Chimp. These are pro-democratic party sites filled with some hardcore political junkies.

And believe it or not, they think very little about cannabis reform. It has been my mission for the last 2 years to hammer away at them about the needfor the Democratic Party to embrace cannabis reform language.

The version of this article that I posted at the Chimp has been launched into the "Recommended Blogs" area making it very visible to the thousands of people who will view it. And yesterday it was in the TOp 5 Most E-mailed articles.

So it was seen by a whole lot more people who don't normally even think about cannabis reform.

It's nice to not preach to the choir.

More about this soon.....

Lothar121

Zombie, I don't really want to start a debate here, but I just wanted to point out that sometimes your rhetoric is over the top. For example, in a post you made on one of those political sites, you said cannabis is not addictive. This is misleading. According to the Institute of Medicine, 9% of those that use cannabis have issues with dependence. Although they note this dependence is less severe than that of alcohol or tobacco, it still exists. You make it seem like nobody ever has any problems with cannabis addiction, a view that is outright wrong.

I feel it is important for the reform community to be as honest about the facts as possible.

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xxdr_zombiexx

They are not interchangeable as seems to be the general use of these terms. This is incorrect.

Cannabis is DEFINATELY habit-forming and ripe for dependency-prone people to to get "hooked" on, but it is NOT "Addictive. It does NOT permanently alter the body's metabolism like heroin or tobacco. Dependence is merely the notion that somebody "thinks" they "need" this or that.

In the post you refer to,[here] I made this quite clear as well as pointed out that in general American discourse "Addiction" is wholly and reglarly misused. People claim they are addicted to this or that and that's simply not true. It's a common misuse of the term.

I am using these terms in their formal meaning.I never said anything like that and I cannot be held responsible for other people's misreading of what I write.

Thanks for reading.

Lothar121

How do you define addiction?

Buzzby

Addiction is generally defined by three of its properties:
1. Escalating tolerance to the effects of the addictive substance
2. Withdrawal symptoms when the addictive substance is withheld
3. Physical craving for the addictive substance

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