Obama Administration Has Spent Nearly $300 Million Cracking Down On Medical Marijuana: Report

[RainDog]

44. This gets into problematic views of what constitutes intent to distribute

Someone doesn't have to actually sell marijuana in order to be charged with doing the same.

The law moves to felony possession (with intent to distribute) based upon the amount of marijuana in someone's possession.

If someone, once a year, grew marijuana and saved that for personal use, that person could be charged with intent to distribute, depending upon the state in which someone lived. The law isn't just "sale." It's "sale/manufacture." So, growing marijuana, without intent to sell or any evidence for the same is the same as selling.

What happens to a person after an arrest for possession is determined by the state in which they were arrested. As of 2010, iirc, there are about 40 thousand people in prison related to marijuana alone - and, again, the state determines how charges are considered - what charges are filed, how long someone serves time, if any, for an offense, and so on. But, again, these numbers don't really get to an accurate count because other charges (i.e. in jail for possession alone) aren't necessarily for other drugs or intent to sale, either.

Laws also have cumulative effect. The three strikes law means that someone arrested for possession three times is at greater risk than a first-time arrest for jail time.

More than 750,000 people a year are arrested for possession. This means that once every 37 seconds someone in the U.S. is arrested for possession.

According to norml - "The total number of marijuana arrests for 2010 far exceeded the combined number of arrests for violent crimes, including murder, manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault."

It's comforting to know that most Americans aren't killing, raping, robbing and assaulting their fellow citizens.

It's outrageous that so much time and effort is put into arresting someone for possession. It's a waste of money and it's against the wishes of the American public to treat fellow citizens as criminals because they are in possession of cannabis.