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Marijuana Users See Little Time In Local Jail
Pubdate: Thu, 25 Aug 2005
Source: Herald Journal, The (UT)
Copyright: 2005 The Herald Journal
Contact: http://www.hjnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2485
Author: Tyler Riggs
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/prison.htm (Incarceration)
MARIJUANA USERS SEE LITTLE TIME IN LOCAL JAIL
Convicted marijuana users in Cache County are seeing little time, if any,
in jail, and rarely go to prison unless their use of marijuana leads them
to harder drugs.
However, local statistics conflict with a report released today by the
Washington, D.C.-based Justice Policy Institute, which says the United
States today is spending 300 times more on drug control than it did 35
years ago and, partially as a result, there are more people serving time in
the U.S. for marijuana-related charges than the total inmate population of
eight European Union countries.
The purpose of the report, co-author Jason Ziedenberg wrote, was to detail
that despite about $20 billion in annual drug control spending, people are
still using marijuana and getting arrested.
"Despite billions in new spending and hundreds of thousands of new arrests,
marijuana use seems to be unaffected by the huge criminal justice response
to this drug," Ziedenberg said.
At the Cache County Jail on Wednesday, 19 of the 317 inmates were serving
time for a marijuana-related charge, five of whom had additional drug
charges involving mushrooms, heroin or cocaine. Likewise, there were 19
inmates serving time exclusively on methamphetamine charges, according to
statistics provided by Cache County Jail Capt. Kim Cheshire.
Locally, the money spent on drug prevention and finding marijuana users is
important because of how marijuana is used as a "gateway drug," Logan
Police Sgt. Bret Randall said.
"Marijuana, although it's prevalent, generally is a gateway drug and people
will have it on top of the meth and on top of the heroin," Randall said.
"But in our experience, most people that commit marijuana offenses do not
do jail time."
In more cases, Randall said, unless an individual is charged with
possessing or using other illegal drugs, they won't spend much time in the
county jail and will rarely go to prison.
"I do not know of any marijuana arrest we've made where they've gone to
prison," he said. "The prison's full and there's no room for people who
smoke marijuana."
The Justice Policy Institute's study claims that 48 percent of all Utah
arrests in 2003 involved marijuana. Those numbers don't correspond with
Cache numbers; in 2003, the Cache-Rich Drug Task Force made 71
marijuana-related arrests. There were 192 total arrests made in 2003 by the
CRDTF, and hundreds of additional arrests that weren't related to drugs.
The Justice Policy Institute is a non-profit research organization with a
goal of ending society's reliance on incarceration. A full version of the
marijuana report can be found on its Web site, www.justicepolicy.org.
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MAP posted-by: Elizabeth Wehrman