US Marijuana Arrests 315 Times Total World Terrorist Detentions
BBSNews - 2003-01-10 -- In November of 2002 the president of the National District Attorneys Association, Dan M. Alsobrooks, opined in a newsletter that "Attempts to
legalize or decriminalize controlled substances, and particularly marijuana, are springing up around the country. Those who
support legalization are well funded and highly adept at manipulating the media. And they do not mind deceiving the American
public as well." The newsletter continues with numerous other factual innaccuracies. In mid-November, the Whitehouse issued a press release
that "World-wide, approximately 2290 terrorist-related arrests were made in 99 countries between September 12, 2001 and
October 28, 2002." Mr. Alsobrooks needs to look at the real facts. Almost three quarters of a million arrests are made each year in
the US for so-called marijuana "crimes." That's 315 times the total number of terrorist related arrests made in the entire world in about the thirteen month
period from 9/11 until the end of October 2002.
This would be a very good time to reassess national security priorities. Do we want to be safe from terrorism or are as the figures clearly show, will
we sacrifice safety to go after a non-existant threat such as marijuana consumers? It's the black market for the currently illicit drugs which is the root of the problem.
There are no beer companies shooting it out on the street corners for "turf." The same is true for tobacco. Disputes are handled
in a court of law, not at the end of a gun.
The following is a guide, based on year 2000 FBI Uniform Crime Report statistics, that you can use to look up annual arrest numbers for
yourself. Take advantage of this enormous resource the US government has put at your
fingertips (while it lasts) and simply look for yourself. The six o'clock soundbytes are leaving out important information which
may lend a truer perspective when it comes time to vote.
Question: Where does that "three quarters of a million marijuana arrests" figure really come from?
Answer: They come from the 2000 FBI Uniform Crime Report.
This is the title page of
that year: http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/00cius.htm - we're going to Section IV,
"Persons Arrested." Which is here:
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_00/00crime4.pdf. On page 2, there is Table 4.1.
It has total US "Arrests for Drug Abuse Violations." But it relates them in
percentages. So we need to look down a little further and we see Table 29
which has the total number of arrests for "drug abuse violations." For 2000
that number was 1,579,566 or the "oft-quoted" one and a half million drug
arrests each year that you may have heard bandied about, time and time
again.
So we flip back to Table 4.1 and see that out of all these "drug abuse
violations," for marijuana, a whopping 5.6% of those total arrests have to do with
"Sale/Manufacturing" which comes out to 88,455 persons arrested for dealing
or growing marijuana in the year 2000.
Looking down the list we find that mystical figure which shows the War on
Some Drugs for what it really is, a war upon marijuana consumers. For the FBI
reports in Table 4.1 that 40.9% of _all_ the drug arrests were for the
possession of marijuana. Again dividing 1,579,566 by 100 and then
multiplying by 40.9 we get 646,042 arrests for marijuana possession alone.
Adding the two together we get a total for marijuana arrests in the US for
the year 2000 of 734,497. Or the other phrase you may see many times
included in a sentence like this:
"There are about one and a half million total drug arrests each year in the
United States. About half that, or nearly three quarters of a million
arrests each year are for marijuana."
Another phrase you might see in relation to these figures is something like
this, "about nine out of ten of those arrests are for possession alone."
This is derived by taking the 734,497 total arrests and dividing it by the
number arrested for "Sales/Manufacturing" and during the year 2000 alone
this comes out to 8.3 and change.
Speaking only for the year 2000 alone it might be more fair to say that
"more than eight out of ten of these arrests are for possession alone"
although this is a semantical argument. Reaching back and running these
figures for several years and averaging the years together it comes closer
to the "nine out of ten" standard response that you may see drug policy
reformers use in communicating about drug policy and these marijuana
statistics.
And perhaps most importantly it might be helpful to put this into
perspective in the total crime scheme of things.
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Report in 2000 there were a total of
13,980,297 arrests for some type of crime. Almost 14 million arrests total.
In Table 29 the list starts out with "Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter"
and then lists "Forcible rape" next and continues on down the line of all
crimes that resulted in arrest.
So this means that "drugs," that terrible scourge that is supposed to be
causing all these other crimes, were subject to a little more than 10% of all
arrests for the year 2000. One would think that if the answer to all crime
was to stop "drugs" that a little more emphasis would be actually on
"drugs." Conversely, there were 1,471,289 arrests for "Driving under the
influence." So I suppose that there was some other drug influence in these
overall statistics... I wonder why alcohol is not outlawed if there are one
and a half million arrests each year for DUI? Nearly the total number of all
illicit drug arrests?
About three million for arrests for illicit drugs and drunk driving total.
Out of almost fourteen million crime arrests.
Of course, the answer is a lot more simple than that and at the same time
vastly more complicated. The evidence has been in for years, and on it's face it's quite clear
that the so-called "gateway theory" is a crock. Policy makers might be
political animals but they are not stupid for the most part. It's pretty
clear that even though about half of the adult population of the US has used
marijuana they are not all out commiting crimes against other citizens.
Why... Why, that would be anarchy! Or a bill of goods sold to the American public as Reefer Madness re-visited?
It is far past the time where we put a licensed someone between our children and all drugs. A twelve year old cannot
belly up to the bar in the US and order a shot of whiskey. They will be challenged by a bartender looking for an ID as proof
of adult age. That same teen unfortunately can go around behind the bar and down the street on the corner, and buy any of the
black market drugs 24/7 with no questions asked and no ID required.
It is time to break that black market known as Prohibition II, the sequel. Trade it in for an adult market with strict
regulation. It's time to bring back plain old-fashioned common sense.
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