Marijuana Arrests For Year 2006

[SHRED]

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Quite remarkable that we have made it to the 21st century and still live in the dark ages in so many ways.

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Marijuana Arrests For Year 2006 – 829,625 Tops Record High...Nearly 6 Percent Increase Over 2005

September 24, 2007 - Washington, DC, USA




Washington, DC: Police arrested a record 829,625 persons for marijuana violations in 2006, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's annual Uniform Crime Report, released today. This is the largest total number of annual arrests for pot ever recorded by the FBI. Marijuana arrests now comprise nearly 44 percent of all drug arrests in the United States.

"These numbers belie the myth that police do not target and arrest minor marijuana offenders," said NORML Executive Director Allen St. Pierre, who noted that at current rates, a marijuana smoker is arrested every 38 seconds in America. "This effort is a tremendous waste of criminal justice resources that diverts law enforcement personnel away from focusing on serious and violent crime, including the war on terrorism."

Of those charged with marijuana violations, approximately 89 percent, 738,915 Americans were charged with possession only. The remaining 90,710 individuals were charged with "sale/manufacture," a category that includes all cultivation offenses, even those where the marijuana was being grown for personal or medical use. In past years, roughly 30 percent of those arrested were age 19 or younger.

"Present policies have done little if anything to decrease marijuana's availability or dissuade youth from trying it," St. Pierre said, noting young people in the U.S. now frequently report that they have easier access to pot than alcohol or tobacco.

http://norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=7370


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[tekisui]

1. Holy shit! I didn't realize the volume of arrests.

[Jackpine Radical]

2. Insanity. Sheer insanity.

There is no social good that comes of our drug policies. The DEA and local cops at every level have become a self-sustaining Frankenstein monster. Our lunatic drug policy has done more to destroy our civil liberties than even das Heimatssicherheitamt--I mean Homeland Security.

[Middle finga]

3. Look like the arrest were increased the most under Clinton and Nixon

[SHRED]

4. Another Clinton blunder...

...he should be ashamed of, along with signing NAFTA and the Telcom Act of '96.


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[SHRED]

5. Blackwater may get involved in this also:

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/09/military_isr_narco_091407/

[bamacrat]

6. Just fucking LEGALIZE IT already.

Tax it regulate it, make it cheaper, stronger, and safer than what is on the streets and the government would make billions a year just on the sale of weed. Not to mention the billions that would be saved from not targeting arresting and jailing people for having it. Its a no brainer, the left would love it because weed would be legal, and thus the world would be happier and safer. The right would love it because of all the money that could be made. What The Fuck.?

[No Coercion]

7. And screw the D.A.R.E. program

It disgusts me that the criminal monopoly known as government confiscates my money and uses it to not only arrest people for non-violent crimes like pot smoking, but also fund the irrational brainwashing D.A.R.E. program. I walked out of my local grocery store the other day to find a table set up bragging about the accomplishments of D.A.R.E. The girl working the table started to ask me if I'd heard about what they were doing lately and I promptly explained to her where she could put the entire program (okay, I was a little more polite than that). My next step is to inform the store management that they may lose me as a customer for such blatant cooperation with the government (specifically, one of the more totalitarian aspects of the government).

[lips]

8. I resent your characterizations of the dark ages

They had very few enforcable laws, then. But I agree, this totalitarian fly by the seat of the last shit you took doesn't seem to be giving anyone the upper hand, but those who own the rungs.