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New FBI Report: A Pot Arrest Every 37 Seconds in 2008

By Jeralyn

The FBI today released its report (available here) on arrests for 2008. Here's the table (jpg) for all drug arrests. Ryan Grim at Huffington Post has reviewed the report and writes:

Someone is arrested in the United States for a drug-law violation every 18 seconds, an FBI report released Monday shows. More than four-fifths of those arrests were for possession only and nearly half were for possession of marijuana. Of the 847,863 marijuana arrests -- one every 37 seconds -- 89 percent were for possession alone.

We're wasting vast amounts of money busting drug users. No wonder we're going broke and can't afford health insurance. Remember this report (pdf) by a Harvard University economist finding that legalizing and regulating drugs would inject tens of billions a year into the U.S. economy? (Details here.)

Grim notes: "In California, medical marijuana is currently taxed and generates several hundred million dollars per year in revenue for the state treasury."

NORML also crunches the arrest figures.

Marijuana arrests now comprised one-half (49.8 percent) of all drug arrests reported in the United States.

Of those charged with marijuana violations, approximately 89 percent, 754,224 Americans were charged with possession only. The remaining 93,640 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.

The War on Drugs is an expensive failure.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on September 14, 2009 (boomark / email).