Nixon Admitted Pot Was 'Not Particularly Dangerous' in Newly Uncovered Audio

[DJ Synikus Makisimus]

5. Pot arrests allowed police to boost statistics.

"Lies, damn lies and statistics." Crime statistics drive funding to law enforcement. It's how "we" determine that "we" are effectively fighting crime. If boosting statistics are the goal, and that's basically the game in criminal justice from top to bottom, you need "solvable" crimes with high conviction rates. In the case of "the war on drugs," marijuana arrests were generally a bit easier than tracking down heroin and cocaine traffickers. Trafficking pot profitably takes up way more space (for scale, think hay bales as opposed to kilogram-sized packages), and even a human can smell it.

The Military-Police-Prison-Surveillance Industrial Complex thrives on these sorts of statistical gymnastics. If crime goes up, they need more funding to fight it. If crime goes down, they need more money to keep their "finely-tuned edge." All the while, they need more laws that make more easily-targeted criminals. That's the game, and Nixon knew it. J. Edgar Hoover built his lifetime appointment off of it: busting low-level gangsters was preferable to busting the Mafia don to take the entire operation down. Better for the statistics.