Pubdate: Sat, 20 Sep 2008 Source: Houston Chronicle (TX) Copyright: 2008 Houston Chronicle Publishing Company Division, Hearst Newspaper Contact: http://www.chron.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/198 Author: Allison Lowe POT ARRESTS AT RECORD HIGH IN U.S. LAST YEAR, FBI SAYS At Same Time, Hard-Drug Cases Declined Slightly Marijuana arrests in the United States rose 5 percent last year to a record 872,721, according to the FBI. Marijuana arrests now comprise 47.5 percent of national drug arrests, up from 43.9 percent in 2006, the FBI said. The 2007 total was more than 43,000 above the previous year's 829,627 marijuana arrests. Tom Riley, spokesman for the federal Office of National Drug Control Policy, said he believed changes in societal perceptions of marijuana may be driving the rising arrest counts. While the drug was historically considered a "soft drug" by many Americans, Riley said, many American communities are now taking marijuana more seriously. "For a long time we had a cultural blind spot in America about marijuana," he said. "Society is not just winking and looking the other way anymore." The FBI's 2007 crime report, which compiles data from 17,000 law enforcement agencies, said total U.S. drug arrests declined in 2007 -- dipping to 1,841,182 from 1,889,810 a year earlier -- despite the jump in marijuana-related arrests. The marijuana statistics included increases in both cases of possession -- which represented about 89 percent of all marijuana arrests -- and arrests for the sale or manufacture of the drug. In contrast, arrest levels for heroin, cocaine and their derivatives fell slightly during the same time period. Those doing jail time for marijuana possession represent less than 0.5 percent of the U.S. prison population. These offenders were generally arrested for possessing mass quantities of the drug, Riley said. Riley also said some marijuana arrests may actually represent cases in which offenders were suspected of more serious offenses, but law enforcement officials chose to charge them with marijuana possession because it was easier to prove. "A lot of times somebody is drunk driving and they have marijuana on them, and it's a marijuana arrest," Riley said. "It's not hard to accumulate a large number of these arrests without it reflecting an actual policy change." Allen St. Pierre, executive director of NORML, a group advocating legalization of marijuana, speculated that the increase in marijuana arrests may be the result of federal justice assistance grant systems, which he said push local police to meet certain performance levels, rather than focusing on the harder drug offenses they would prefer to pursue. "My supposition is if the federal government stops spending all this money on incentivizing local police to make this arrest, there will likely be for the first time in a decade a turn down in marijuana arrests," he said. - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin