Marijuana.com

MonarchX

Is there any kind of statistic that shows % of people caught out of reported number of users?
(no, I'm not going to use it for any kind of excuses)

I know that the number of arrests has gone up considerable... is that due to increased police activity or due to increased marijuana usage? I personally think its usage because I am beginning to see it everywhere. There are more people who smoke weed than people who smoke cigarettes around here.

 

Andrew87

I don't think this link will cover everything you're looking for, but it's a start:


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

The number of arrests has been above 500,000 since 1995.

Buzzby

For a ballpark figure, it's estimated that there are 24,000,000 Americans who have smoked at least once in the last year. The arrest figures are close to 800,000. That's 3.33% annually.

This would indicate that if you continue to smoke for 30 years, your chances of getting busted approach 100%.

Both. I suspect that it has more to do with increased police activity. Busting people for possession is cheap, easy, and fairly safe. It builds up their arrest statistics, makes it look like they're "fighting the scourge of drugs", and gets them federal funds to buy new police toys.

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BartSimpson

There is another factor that was explained to me by an LEO. It seems we have become such a difficult society to deal with that "cutting someone slack" and letting them off can often result in complaints to an officer's supervisor. You know - the LEO pulled me over for no reason, the LEO pulled me over just because I was black, or the LEO hassled me and my boys because we were in the park after dark. We see it here on this board when persons (often young) claim they were hassled and they are going to sue. It is better to write the individual up for an offense and have them explain it to the judge, than suffer the wrath of complaints and the LEO have to explain it to their supervisor.

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phuzz01

Bart makes a very good point. Here is another one: civil litigation. It has gone up considerably over time, which forces departments to institute stricter policies to protect themselves. Here is an example in my state:

Several years ago, some kids were found with booze in the car. The officer dumped it out and sent them home, and six hours later, they were involved in a fatal motor vehicle collision. The parents of the deceased teen sued the officer, the agency and the municipality, arguing that the officer had a duty to take the minors into custody and that if he had done so the collision would not have occured. The case went all the way up to the state Supreme Court, which ruled that police officers have a responsibility to arrest minors that are found with alcohol. If they do not, they are civilly and even possibly criminally responsible for anything that happens to that minor thereafter. There has not been a similar case for marijuana YET, but I imagine one will be coming down the pike. I'm sure that there are similar cases in many other states.

 

KingDub

Glad I take a year off every now and then.

MonarchX

I think USA has more marijuana smokers than any other nation %-wise...

Broliette

I could be wrong, but I do believe Canada is the highest...

aha found it

We're No. 1, eh?, High Times Nov 382
"Here's another tidbit from the 2007 World Drug Report, released by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime: Canadian stoners are kicking ass! Pot smokers up north use marijuana at the rate of four times the world average, making Canada the leader in the industrialized world for cannabis consumption. According to the statistics, 16.8 percent of Canadians ages 15-64 smoked marijuana or used some other cannabis product in 2006. The world average is 3.8 percent."

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MonarchX

But some American stats show that 75% of people have at least tried it in their lifetime, which is like 3/4.

I think thats too high, but I am sure that way more than 15% of USA's residents have tried it.

Do they have drug tests in Canada?

Buzzby

New Zealand and Jamaica have more. I'm trying to find the news article (from this site) that ranked the countries.

Actually, it was a little less than 50%. The percentage were looking at, though, is not how many have ever tried it, but how many have used it in the last year. For the US, that figure is 8%