Legal Commentary

Marijuana Arrests at Record Breaking High....Again

By Jeralyn

The Bush Adminstration's Drug Czar John Walters said on C-Span last week (video here) that it's a lie that 800,000 Americans were arrested for pot last year. He said folks would have better luck finding a “unicorn” in jail for pot.

NORML has the statistics:

Police arrested a record 872,721 persons for marijuana violations in 2007, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Report released today. This is the largest total number of annual arrests for cannabis ever recorded by the FBI. Cannabis arrests now comprise nearly 47.5 percent of all drug arrests in the United States.

"These numbers belie the myth that police do not target and arrest minor cannabis offenders," said NORML Executive Director Allen St. Pierre, who noted that at current rates, a cannabis consumer is arrested every 37 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."

More....

Arrest statistics are here . Of those arrested for drug offenses, 42.1% were for possession of marijuana and 5.3% were for sale or cultivation of pot.

Here's today's FBI press release announcing the report.

As compared to arrests for other crimes:

The total number of marijuana arrests in the U.S. for 2007 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.

And here's an interesting stat:

October 10, 2008 will mark the arrest of the 20 millionth cannabis consumer arrested under cannabis prohibition, circa 1937.

Just another Bush Administration lie exposed.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on September 15, 2008 (boomark / email).