Pubdate: Sun, 11 Nov 2012
Source: Baltimore Sun (MD)
Copyright: 2012 The Baltimore Sun Company
Contact:  http://www.baltimoresun.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/37
Author: Dan Rodricks

Election Day Message

THE NONSENSE OF MARIJUANA BUSTS SHOWN

Voters in Washington and Colorado Say No to the Long, Costly War on Pot

Last month, the Federal Bureau of Investigation released its 
accounting of all arrests made by law enforcement agencies across the 
fruited plain. Cops and federal agents made 12,408,899 arrests in the 
USA in 2011. No wonder we're known around the world as Incarceration Nation.

Let's walk through the breakdown of that big number:

*Of the total, 534,704 arrests were for violent crimes, and that 
number was down about 5 percent from 2010.

*Driving under the influence accounted for 1.21 million arrests.

*Larceny and theft: 1.26 million

*Drug abuse violations: 1.5 million.

*Three-quarters of all people arrested were males. Nearly 70 percent 
of the arrested were white, 28 percent were black, and the rest were 
other races.

Let's go back to drug arrests because that's always the biggest 
single category in the FBI's Uniform Crime Report.

Here's how the narc stuff breaks down:

The sale or manufacture of controlled dangerous substances - heroin, 
cocaine, marijuana and other "dangerous, non-narcotic drugs" 
(barbiturates and benzedrine), and "synthetic or manufactured drugs" 
(Demerol, methadone) - accounted for just 18 percent of the 1.5 
million drug arrests last year.

That means the overwhelming majority of them - 82 percent - were for 
possession.

The FBI breaks that number down, too.

Of all the drug arrests, 16 percent were for heroin or cocaine 
possession, 17 percent were for possession of "dangerous, 
non-narcotic drugs," and about 5 percent were for possession of 
"synthetic or manufactured drugs."

Last, but certainly not least, were arrests for marijuana possession. 
They accounted for 43 percent of all drug arrests in 2011.

So, just in case you were operating under the impression that the law 
had backed off the whole grass-possession thing, there it is: More 
than four out of 10 of all narcotics arrests made in United States 
were for people having marijuana in their possession.

And one more breakdown for you:

Arrests for marijuana possession accounted for just about half of all 
drug arrests in the Northeast and in the South.

So that's what our cops spend a lot of their time doing - arresting 
people for pot, hundreds of thousands of times per year.

They do a lot of other stuff, of course, and a lot of the other stuff 
actually protects people from bad guys, and thank you very much.

But this whole business of arresting people for smoking pot - one 
huge waste of time and money.

I've been tracking for years a group of law enforcement and criminal 
justice professionals (cops, prosecutors and judges) who agree with that.

The group is called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. It's a 
national organization that declared the war on drugs senseless. The 
head of LEAP is a retired narc named Neill Franklin who lives in 
Maryland. He served 34 years with the state police and Baltimore 
Police Department.

"Even excluding the costs involved for later trying and then 
imprisoning these people, taxpayers are spending between $1.5 billion 
and $3 billion a year just on the police and court time involved in 
making these arrests," Franklin said after the FBI's latest report. 
"That's a lot of money to spend for a practice that four decades of 
unsuccessful policies have proved does nothing to reduce the 
consumption of drugs."

The FBI numbers take on heightened relevance in light of what 
happened on Election Day.

On Tuesday, voters in Colorado and Washington made it legal to smoke 
pot without a prescription or a medical reason.

That's a breakthrough in the long stalemate in the public debate 
about the war on drugs - electorates in two states expressing what 
the American public has been telling politicians for a long time, 
that we spend too much money and manpower on chasing and 
incarcerating people who use drugs. It has been going on for 40 
years. It hasn't decreased the demand for drugs, but it has led to an 
epoch of terrible violence related to the underground commerce, and 
it has filled our prisons.

And just in case you thought the war on drugs was all about stopping 
the flow of heroin and cocaine, look at the numbers again: Nearly 50 
percent of all drug arrests made in this country last year were for 
either the sale or possession of marijuana.

Of course, despite the votes in Colorado and Washington, federal law 
still lists marijuana as an illegal drug.

You don't have to be a liberal or libertarian to see how that makes 
little sense. You can be a conservative and see the merit in the 
argument to liberate the marijuana laws: The money spent on that 
effort could be returned to taxpayers or it could go to some other 
realm of law enforcement (prosecuting enterprises that pollute our 
water and air, or making our border with Mexico more secure). Maybe 
there's a new federal prison we won't have to build. Maybe our cops 
could spend more time working with at-risk kids to keep them from 
being recruited by gangs.

There's a better way to go with all this. The people in Washington 
and Colorado opened the door.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom