A Drug Arrest Every 18 Seconds

by Matt Kelley · 2009-09-14 10:35:00 UTC
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The FBI today released its annual review of crime stats across the United States - and there are some interesting numbers on the drug war. Marijuana arrests dipped slightly, but the new stats make painfully clear that our drug war rages on.

Marijuana arrests dropped year-over-year in 2008 for the first time since 2002, but the enormous amounts of law enforcement time, money and energy spent on marijuana busts still baffles. Police across the country made 847, 863 marijuana-related arrests in 2008, and 89 percent of them were for possession or use. There were more arrests for marijuana possession than all violent crimes combined. Marijuana Policy Project Executive Director Rob Kampia said the small drop in arrests isn't too much to get excited about:

"This slight dip in the number of marijuana arrests provides a small amount of relief to the tens of millions of American marijuana consumers who have been under attack by their own government for decades," Kampia said. "It's time to stop wasting billions of tax dollars criminalizing responsible Americans for using a substance that's safer than alcohol, and to put an end to policies that simply hand this massive consumer market to unregulated criminals."

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition viewed today's stats as more evidence of a drug war out of control. The group pointed out that there's one drug arrest in the U.S. every 18 seconds. Each of those arrests negatively impact an individual's life, and they clog our courts, jails and prisons when there are clearly bigger fish to fry.

The FBI's annual Uniform Crime Report is full of interesting data on crime in our country - I'll have more from the report tomorrow. Take a look for yourself here.

Photo by EMS_EMT

Matt Kelley is the Online Communications Manager at the Innocence Project and a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Follow him on Twitter @mattjkelley.
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