Pubdate: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 Source: Baltimore Sun (MD) Copyright: 2013 The Baltimore Sun Company Contact: http://www.baltimoresun.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/37 Author: Ian Duncan MD. MARIJUANA ARREST RATE SOARS 4th-Highest for Possession; State Enforcement Cost $106 Million, ACLU Says Maryland arrests people for marijuana possession at one of the highest rates in the country and spends heavily on those arrests, according to a new study by the American Civil Liberties Union. Overall, Maryland had the fourth-highest rate of marijuana possession arrests among states and the District of Columbia, the group said this week. And the state spent more than $106 million enforcing its possession laws in 2010, according to the report. Per person, only the District of Columbia and New York spent more. The report found that Worcester County had the highest rate of possession arrests of any county nationwide with a population greater than 30,000: 2,132 per 100,000 residents. Lt. Edward C. Schreier, a spokesman for the Worcester County sheriff's office, said the numbers are inflated because of the volume of tourists who visit Ocean City each year, a point the ACLU conceded in a footnote to the report. "We're usually over-represented in statistics like this," Schreier said, but added that drug enforcement is a priority for the office. Baltimore ranked fifth among localities for its marijuana arrest rate. In Maryland, blacks were nearly three times as likely to be arrested for possession as whites, below the national average, the study found. In Baltimore, blacks were more than five times as likely to be arrested for possession as whites, above the national average. Since 2001, the arrest rate for whites on marijuana possession charges in Maryland has held steady, but the rate for blacks climbed during the past decade. Whites and blacks report smoking marijuana at similar rates, according to the ACLU, which supports legalization of the drug. "The war on marijuana has disproportionately been a war on people of color," the ACLU's Ezekiel Edwards, one of the primary authors of the report, said in a statement. "State and local governments have aggressively enforced marijuana laws selectively against black people and communities, needlessly ensnaring hundreds of thousands of people in the criminal justice system at tremendous human and financial cost." Baltimore police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said the department targets "behavior, not race." The findings come as a number of states are experimenting with scaling back marijuana possession laws - Washington and Colorado voted to legalize possession last year - and public attitudes about the drug are softening. Marijuana possession is illegal in Maryland, but some local prosecutors are looking at alternatives to full-bore prosecutions. They want to divert first-, second- and, in some cases, third-time offenders into programs that enable them to avoid a criminal record. President Barack Obama's drug czar said recently at an event in Baltimore that the administration supports sending more people into treatment. Some state legislators want to go further, pushing bills in this year's General Assembly session to legalize marijuana possession or remove criminal penalties. The decriminalization measure, which the ACLU supported, passed in the Senate but died in the House of Delegates. "With this momentum and the new report, the ACLU of Maryland will continue advocating for reform of Maryland's racially biased and aggressive penalization of marijuana possession, which has torn communities apart, not improved public safety, not eradicated use, and has been a colossal waste of money," Sara Love, public policy director of the ACLU of Maryland, said in a statement. Law enforcement officials in Maryland opposed the bill because they said investigating even small amounts of marijuana can help uncover more serious crimes. Schreier recounted cases in which marijuana led to big drug busts and helped solve homicides. "The thing that gets lost in this report is marijuana leads to other things," he said. Baltimore Sun reporter Justin Fenton contributed to this article. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom