Reply #8: "... a marijuana smoker is arrested every 38 seconds in America."

[Zorra]

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.

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

The entire US justice system is now a huge corporate-type entity geared toward making profit on the surveillance and control of citizens. The "War on Drugs" is nothing more than an excuse for the government to hire far more police than would be necessary if there were sane policies regarding the use of drugs, particularly marijuana.

If the police, and the justice system in general, stopped arresting, prosecuting, and imprisoning people for involvement with marijuana, half of the people that work in the prison industry would be out of a job. And the police could spend far more of their time protecting society from violent criminals rather than busting Uncle Joe for smoking a joint in the parking lot of the Red Dog Saloon.

Personally, I don't use drugs; they make me feel like crap. But our current drug laws and policies are glaringly ineffective and are a huge waste of tax money while at the same time creating an enormous amount of unnecessary human misery. Therefore, even though I don't have any involvement with drugs whatsoever, I am negatively affected by drug laws and the prison industry in a very extreme way.

But ineffectiveness, waste, and incompetence seem to be the hallmarks of the Bu*h/republican approach to governing in their lemming drive toward establishing a fascist idiocracy. So until we vote the republicans out and establish a solid Democratic majority in Congress, and get a Dem in the WH, we will continue to senselessly throw people and money into this giant black holw that is the US prison industry.