Source: "Numbers Tell of Failure in Drug War" By EDUARDO PORTER - NY Times - July 3, 2012
[S]ince 1997 the New York City Police Department has arrested 430,000 people for possessing small amounts of marijuana, mostly teenagers and young people in their twenties. Most people arrested were not smoking pot. Usually they just carried a bit of it in a pocket. In 2008 alone, the NYPD arrested and jailed 40,300 people for possessing a small amount of marijuana. These extraordinary numbers of arrests and jailings, continuing for over twelve years, now make New York City the marijuana arrest capital of the world.
The arrests for marijuana possession first increased dramatically under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. They have continued unabated under Mayor Michael Bloomberg. By 2008 Bloomberg had arrested more people for pot possession than Giuliani, and more than other mayor in the world.
Why has the NYPD continued to order narcotics and patrol officers to make so many misdemeanor pot arrests? For many reasons. The arrests are easy, safe, and provide training for new officers. The arrests gain overtime pay for patrol and narcotics police and their supervisors. The pot arrests allow officers to show productivity, which counts for promotions and choice assignments. Marijuana arrests enable the NYPD to obtain fingerprints, photographs and other data on many young people they would not otherwise have in their criminal justice databases. And there is very little public criticism and thus far no political opposition to New York City’s marijuana arrest crusade.
As NYPD and New York Criminal Court data show, before 1997 marijuana arrests were less than one percent of all arrests. The lowest-level misdemeanor pot possession arrests are now over ten percent of all arrests in New York City.
New York is extreme in the number of its marijuana arrests. But other cities are also making many pot possession arrests and jailings at high rates, often using the same techniques as the NYPD. As FBI arrest data shows, this includes Atlanta, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Denver, Houston, Indianapolis, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Antonio, and other cities.
Since the 1990s, the U.S. War on Drugs has emphasized making many low-level possession arrests, especially of marijuana. At least forty percent of all drug arrests are now just for marijuana possession and U.S. marijuana arrests are at an all time high. In the last ten years, the U.S. has arrested more than six million people, mostly young people, for possessing marijuana.
In the 1980s Barack Obama was a college student in New York City, living on the border of Harlem. He used marijuana, walked around the city a lot, and sometimes may have carried a bit of pot in his pocket. If the current policing policies of New York and other cities were in effect at that time, he might well have been arrested and jailed. If that had happened Barack Obama would not be president today.
Source: "New York’s War on Marijuana" By Harry G. Levine - AlterNet - Aug 10, 2009
[W]e have vastly increased the proportion of our population in prisons. The United States now incarcerates people at a rate nearly five times the world average. In part, that’s because the number of people in prison for drug offenses rose roughly from 41,000 in 1980 to 500,000 today. Until the war on drugs, our incarceration rate was roughly the same as that of other countries.
Source: "Drugs Won the War" - By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF - NY Times - June 13, 2009
The Bush administration's habit of politicizing its scientific agencies was on display again this week when the Food and Drug Administration, for no compelling reason, unexpectedly issued a brief, poorly documented statement disputing the therapeutic value of marijuana. The statement was described as a response to numerous inquiries from Capitol Hill, but its likely intent was to buttress a crackdown on people who smoke marijuana for medical purposes and to counteract state efforts to legalize the practice.
F.D.A. Dismisses Medical Benefit From Marijuana (April 21, 2006) Ordinarily, when the F.D.A. addresses a thorny issue, it convenes a panel of experts who wade through the latest evidence and then render an opinion as to whether a substance is safe and effective to use. This time the agency simply issued a skimpy one-page statement asserting that "no sound scientific studies" supported the medical use of marijuana.
That assertion ,,,appears to flout the spirit of a 1999 report from the Institute of Medicine, a unit of the National Academy of Sciences.
The government is actively discouraging relevant research, according to scientists quoted by Gardiner Harris in yesterday's Times. It's obviously easier and safer to issue a brief, dismissive statement than to back research that might undermine the administration's inflexible opposition to the medical use of marijuana.
Source: "The Politics of Pot" - NY Times Editorial - April 22, 2006
On 9/11, 6% of FBI personnel were working on counter-terrorism.
Twice as many agents were assigned to drug enforcement.
Source: "60 Minutes" CBS - Mike Wallace - 10/9/05
A crime has a victim.
In order to be considered a crime, an action which does not victimize a specific individual or group by negatively affecting someone directly must be demonstrably harmful to society at large. This MUST be a very narrow test.
Americans are rotting away in prison for simple possession of marijuana
By the end of 2002, one of every 143 U.S. residents was in federal, state or local custody. Drug offenders now make up more than half of all federal prisoners.
Source: Dallas Morning News - 7/28/2003
12 million citizens (over 4% of the entire US population) have been arrested on marijuana charges in the U.S. since 1965. In 2000, state and local law enforcement arrested 734,498 people for marijuana violations. This is an increase of 800 percent since 1980, and is the highest ever recorded by the FBI. More than 700,000 Americans were arrested on marijuana charges in 2002, and more than 5 million Americans have been arrested for marijuana offenses in the past decade. The overwhelming majority of those charged with marijuana violations in 2000-- 646,042 Americans (88 %) -- were for simple possession. The remaining 12% (88,456 Americans) were for "sale/manufacture", an FBI category which includes marijuana grown for personal use or purely medical purposes. These new FBI statistics indicate that one marijuana smoker is arrested every 45 seconds in America. Taken together, the total number of marijuana arrests for 2000 far exceeded the combined number of arrests for violent crimes, including murder, manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault.
Source: www.norml.org
Why marijuana is illegal
If you want to know why something is the way it is, follow the money. Marijuana prohibition creates a river of money. The people who have snouts in the river of money as it currently exists have a vested interest in keeping that river flowing. They use some of that money to influence government policy and public opinion in order to prevent the redirection of this river of money. Legalizing marijuana would redirect the river of money.
Every arrest for marijuana possession triggers a series of events. First, the accused hires a lawyer. This phenomenon supplies a river of money to attorneys to defend marijuana suspects in court. Next, the accused (if convicted) must pay court costs, which provide another river of money to fund the justice system. Finally, because of laws that allow local law enforcement to confiscate property related to "narcotic trafficking", this system supplies municipalities with an endless supply of merchandise for auctions. Probation officers must be hired to deal with the marijuana users placed on probation. For those that wind up in prison, prisons must be constructed, staffed and supplied. The "prison-industrial complex" in this country constitutes an enormous market for support businesses.
Most marijuana consumed in America is grown in the regions of Central America and the northern countries of South America. These countries are run by tin-horn dictators that use their resources primarily to purchase weapons with which to repress their peasant populations. And who is the primary weapons merchant in the world? It's the United States, of course. Much of the money spent on marijuana in goes to developing countries who turn around and spend it on American weapons. Marijuana laws are an indirect method of subsidizing American weapons manufacturers. (Remember the Contras?)
Ramifications of legal marijuana
If marijuana were legalized, it is presumed that legal marijuana would be regulated in much the same way as alcohol. Marijuana would likely be distributed and sold via the same distributors and retailers that make alcohol available. Marijuana might well share shelf space in local liquor stores (and even grocery stores) with beer, wine and liquor. It is reasonable to assume that some percentage of shoppers who might now purchase alcohol from those shelves might instead opt to reach for marijuana instead. This means that the alcohol industry would lose some percentage of its sales to marijuana growers. Thus, alcohol producers may well have something to lose from the legalization of marijuana.
America's domestic marijuana crop is easily valued in excess of $10 billion annually and usually ranks in the top 10 cash crops. Currently law enforcement spends an estimated $10 billion annually to pursue efforts to outlaw marijuana.
Source: www.norml.org
Mexico enacted a controversial law on Thursday [8/20/09] decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and other drugs
Mexican authorities said the change only recognized the longstanding practice here of not prosecuting people caught with small amounts of drugs.
The maximum amount of marijuana considered to be for "personal use" under the new law is 5 grams — the equivalent of about four marijuana cigarettes. Other limits are half a gram of cocaine, 50 milligrams of heroin, 40 milligrams for methamphetamine and 0.015 milligrams of LSD.
Source: "Mexico Legalizes Drug Possession" By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS - NY Times - August 21, 2009
Many advocates of legalization emphasize that legal marijuana could be taxed, in which case it would add money to rather than draining money from the public coffers, just like the legal sale of alcohol. However, this reasoning misses a fundamental difference between alcohol and marijuana production. Marijuana is a weed. (Hence the slang term "weed.") It is easy to grow with only a small area of land and a few seeds. If it's cultivation were legal, marijuana smokers would likely opt not to purchase it and pay tax, but rather simply to grow it in their back yards. The result would be drastically reduced profits for the agribusinesses, the distributors, and the retailers that gear up to provide marijuana to the public. Plus that tax windfall would never materialize. Marijuana would suddenly be free. Neither business nor government would be able to make any money. The river of money wouldn't be redirected. Rather it would in large part simply dry up.
The river of money would stop flowing south of the border, where the U.S. government maintains a stable of puppet dictators that collect the profits from illegal marijuana sales and funnel them back into selected American businesses. Dictators who refuse to play ball meet with undignified ends. (Remember Manuel Noreiga?)
Another river of money that would dry up is the money leeched by attorneys, the justice system, local police and the prison system. As soon as marijuana is legalized, there will be no need to hire the myriad of defense attorneys. Suddenly there would be huge numbers of lawyers with no drug busts to defend against. Court dockets will be substantially reduced. Confiscation of personal property by local law enforcement agencies would be eliminated. The entire law enforcement community could be reduced in size, or their energy could be redirected to fighting real crime…the kind with victims. Shrinking prison populations, while great for taxpayers, would reduce the amount of money spent (wasted) on incarcerating otherwise law abiding citizens.
Marijuana is illegal because there are lots of entrenched people with a vested interest in keeping the river of money flowing.
Source: Boondocks by Aaron McGruder - 2/28/05