At most, the marijuana convictions may satisfy the needs of some politicians and certain law-enforcement workers who seem to feel as if they are engaged in a good cause while they are actively searching for and convicting so-called marijuana offenders. The politicians may think it makes them look tough on crime, but knowing that they are supporting unjust laws and using so-called marijuana offenders as political pawns, the enforcement of marijuana laws makes politicians look like weaklings for not sticking up for what is right: to abolish these insane laws.
“The rate of incarceration in prison and jail was 701 inmates per 100,000 residents in 2002, up from 601 in 1995. At year end 2002, 1 in every 143 U.S. residents were incarcerated in state or federal prison or a local jail.”
– Harrison, Paige M. & Allen J. Beck, Ph.D., US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners in 2002; Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, July 2003; Page 2
According to the International Center for Prison Studies at King’s College, London, there are more Americans in jail than in any other country. Every year there are record numbers of people being incarcerated in U.S. prisons. In 2005 there were 2.2 million Americans in prison or jail, a figure that represents a 2.7 percent increase over 2004. China was second with 1.5 million of its citizens in prison, and Russia was third with 870,000. Additionally, there were 737 per 100,000 people, or one in every 32 American adults behind bars, on probation, or on parole in 2006. The 2006 incarceration rate for many other Western industrialized nations was about 100 per 100,000 people. The population of U.S. prisons is larger than the populations of some countries. The U.S. spends more of their budget on prisons than they do on higher education.
“It makes a lot of sense to treat marijuana the same way we treat alcohol. There’s no evidence that demand for marijuana will ever go away. Demand for intoxication in one way or another has been around for millennia. It’s part of human nature. The heavy-handed, prohibitionist approach is clearly the wrong approach”
– Jeffrey Miron, Harvard University economist who estimated that taxing marijuana sales similar to tobacco would bring in about $6.2 billion in revenue, and legalizing it would save $5.3 billion for state and local governments, and $2.4 billion for the federal government.
In 2007, the state of California had an $8 billion prison budget. Since 1980 the state has mandated imprisonment for many crimes and reduced the chances of early release for good behavior while building more than 20 prisons. The prison inmate population in the state increased from 26,000 in 1978 to 170,000 in 2006. Over the same time period the union of prison guards established itself as a major player in state politics. The 2006 overtime pay for more than 6,000 prison guards in California was over $100,000, and one guard made $252,570 in the fiscal year that ended in June 2006. In their “get-tough” stance, the prison system has dropped most of the educational, job training, and counseling opportunities for prisoners, increasing the likelihood that prisoners would fail to improve their lives during or after prison.
About one in forty Americans who are in jail are there because of “marijuana offenses,” and about two million of the seven million people in U.S. prisons in 2005 were there for breaking drug laws, and about 800,000 for breaking marijuana laws. According to the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, 49 percent of the growth in federal prison population from 1995 to 2003 could be attributed to drug prisoners. According to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics report, Drug Use and Dependence, State and Federal Prisoners, 2004, about 12.7 percent of state inmates and 12.4 percent of federal inmates who are being held on drug violations in federal prisons were there for breaking marijuana laws (this does not include local or county jail inmate populations). The incarceration and criminal justice costs for arresting, convicting, and imprisoning people who break marijuana laws was estimated to be $8.5 billion in 2005.
“Today’s figures fail to capture incarceration’s impact on the thousands of children left behind by mothers in prison. Misguided policies that create harsher sentences for nonviolent drug offenses are disproportionately responsible for the increasing rates of women in prisons and jails.”
– Marc Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project, December 2006; SentencingProject.org
“The United States has 5 percent of the world’s population and 25 percent of the world’s incarcerated population. We rank first in the world in locking up our fellow citizens. We now imprison more people for drug law violations than all of Western Europe, with a much larger population, incarcerates for all offenses.”
– Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance, December 2006; DrugPolicy.org
“We send more people to prison, for more different offenses, for longer periods of time than anybody else.”
– Ryan King, policy analyst for The Sentencing Project, December 2006; SentencingProject.org
“Why are so many people in prison? Blame mandatory sentencing laws and the record number of nonviolent drug offenders subject to them.”
– Julie Stewart, President of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, December 2006; FAMM.org
How did those arrested and charged with marijuana “crimes” become pawns for politicians to show how they are “tough on crime”?
“If I am elected president of the U.S., America will once again set about the business of winning the War on Drugs. I will get the Guard back to where it belongs – in the forefront.”
– Bob Dole, speaking before the annual convention of the National Guard Association, September 1, 1996
In September 1996, while criticizing the Clinton administration for the increase in drug use among teens, Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole once again pledged to expand the role of the National Guard in fighting illegal narcotics, including marijuana. Under the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, the military is supposed to stay out of domestic policy. But, as I mention elsewhere in the book, the Reagan administration had the act amended in 1982 so that the military could be used to enforce drug laws within U.S. borders.
After Dole lost the election he went on to work in drug sales as a spokesmodel for a pharmaceutical company selling erection pills.
The claim by the presidential candidate was somewhat schizophrenic. Record numbers of people were arrested and imprisoned on drug-related charges during the Clinton administration. And here was a candidate saying he wanted to increase the spending on the so-called drug war, and imprison more people. It should have been very clear by then that the War on Drugs was and is a complete failure, a waste of billions of tax dollars every year, and that arresting people on drug charges is not going to prevent people from taking drugs. But perhaps Bob Dole was behaving just like other politicians, completely detached from the true needs of the people, and only interested in those who donate to their campaigns – such as the prison employee unions, the companies that construct and manage prisons under government contract, and pharmaceutical companies.
As I was writing this I heard about a plan being presented by the U.S. Senate Finance Committee to cut down on prostitution and pimpery. They wanted to start requiring pimps to file employment forms and withholding taxes for their prostitutes/employees. As if we haven’t already discovered that trying to control the sex lives of humans doesn’t work. The politicians should move on to important matters, such as the environment, dramatically reducing fossil fuel use, pollution reduction, legalizing industrial hemp farming, species and terrain preservation, forest and wildland restoration, and education.
Many politicians seem clueless as to what would be best for American youth, and society in general. As politicians pledge to increase drug war spending and continue to pass and enforce arcane marijuanaphobic drug laws that also outlaw hemp farming, one has to wonder if they know anything about the condition of the schools and educational system in the U.S. Would it not be better to help improve the U.S. educational system by increasing teacher pay and creating better programs for the children of the country rather than to spend the money arresting the children and young adults who may turn to drugs to stimulate their minds that go wasted sitting in dull classrooms in neglected school systems for twelve years?
If the politicians would stop focusing on useless laws and start using their time for things that would actually help society, such as defending the works of Nature that are the artwork of this God in which so many politicians profess a belief, the people who elected them to their grandstanding pedestals would be served.
One thing politicians can do if they are really interested in improving society and the condition of their fellow citizens is to stop this drug war, which is a war on its own citizens, and to completely legalize the farming of industrial hemp.
“A majority of the American public opposes sending marijuana smokers to jail, and three out of four support the medical use of marijuana. Yet many elected officials remain fearful that if they support these reform proposals, they will be perceived as ‘soft’ on crime and drugs and defeated at the next election.
Tell your elected officials that you know the difference between marijuana and more dangerous drugs and between marijuana smoking and violent crime, and that you do not support spending billions of dollars per year incarcerating nonviolent marijuana offenders.
To make that easy, NORML has a program on our Web site that will identify your state and federal elected officials, and provide a sample letter that you can fax to Congress or e-mail to state legislators.”
– National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, NORML.org
“Marijuana prohibition may be defined as the set of laws that establish criminal penalties for all marijuana offenses, including possession and cultivation for personal use. Efforts to change these laws – even if only to remove the prohibition against medical use – have invariably been met with the argument that the prohibition of marijuana is necessary to curtail adolescent drug abuse. This report shows that the prohibition of marijuana in the United States has not curtailed adolescent marijuana use. The Marijuana Policy Project Foundation was unable to find any scientific evidence demonstrating that the marijuana prohibition results in decreased use or that removing criminal penalties would result in increased use of marijuana by adolescents.
Conclusions
• Existing scientific evidence indicates that the prohibition of marijuana does not curtail adolescent marijuana use.
• The prohibition of marijuana has not decreased availability or served as an effective deterrent.
• Marijuana prohibition may actually increase adolescent marijuana use.
• Marijuana prohibition may increase the likelihood that the marijuana users will use hard drugs.
• Existing evidence indicates that removing criminal penalties for the personal use and acquisition of marijuana would not lead to an increase in use among adolescents.”
– Marijuana Prohibition has not Curtailed Marijuana Use by Adolescents, Marijuana Policy Project Foundation study, by Chuck Thomas, director of communications; MPP.org/Adolescents.html
“Arresting these otherwise law-abiding citizens serves no legitimate purpose; extends government into inappropriate areas of our private lives; and causes enormous harm to the lives, careers and families of the more than 700,000 cannabis consumers arrested each year in this country.
According to recent statistics provided by the federal government, nearly 80 million Americans admit having smoked marijuana. Of these, twenty million Americans smoked marijuana during the past year.
Cannabis consumers are no different from their nonsmoking peers, except for their cannabis use. Like most Americans, they are responsible citizens who work hard, raise families, contribute to their communities, and want a safe, crime-free neighborhood in which to live. They are certainly not part of the crime problem in this country, and it is terribly unfair to continue to treat them as criminals.
Many successful business and professional leaders, including many state and elected federal officials, admit they have smoked marijuana.
Responsible cannabis use causes no harm to society and should be of no interest to state and federal governments. Today, far more harm is caused by cannabis prohibition than by the use of cannabis itself.
We must reflect this in our state and federal laws, and put to rest the myth that marijuana smoking is a fringe or deviant activity engaged in only by those on the margins of American society.”
– National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, NORML.org
“It is not too late for the U.S. to move to a more sensible path. We are approaching three quarters of a million marijuana arrests annually. Every year that the U.S. fails to adopt a policy based on research, science and facts we destroy millions of lives and tear apart millions of families.
Where will we be in another thirty years if we don’t change course and make peace in the marijuana war? Now that we know the war’s roots are rotten – and after we’ve lived through the decades of damage and failure it has produced – we should face the facts. The thirty-year-old recommendations of the Shafer Commission are a good place to start.”
– Once-secret Nixon Tapes Show Why the U.S. Outlawed Pot, by Kevin Zeese, president of Common Sense for Drug Policy, CSDP.org; Tuesday, July 12, 2005