Decriminalization Is Not Enough

by | Oct 10, 2017

Decriminalization Is Not Enough

by | Oct 10, 2017

According to recently released FBI crime data, there were 1,572,579 drug arrests in the United States last year. That’s an average of one drug arrest nearly every 20 seconds. The total number is up by about 5.6 percent from the 1,488,707 arrests for drug crimes in the United States in 2015.

Because of a change in how the annual law enforcement numbers are publicized, it’s harder to determine just how many people were busted for marijuana and how many were busted for other drugs. However, Tom Angell — founder of the nonprofit Marijuana Majority and editor of the cannabis news portal Marijuana Moment — was able to determine that “marijuana arrests are on the rise in the U.S., even as more states legalize the drug.”

According to Angell,

Marijuana possession busts comprised 37.36% of all reported drug arrests in the U.S. in 2016, and cannabis sales and manufacturing arrests accounted for another 4.18% of the total. Added together, marijuana arrests made up 41.54% of the 1,572,579 drug busts in the country last year. That means, based on an extrapolation, that police arrested people for cannabis 653,249 times in the U.S. in 2016. That averages out to about one marijuana arrest every 48 seconds.

It is incredible that the federal and state governments’ war on marijuana is still going strong.

Read more at the Future of Freedom Foundation.

Laurence Vance

Laurence Vance

Laurence M. Vance is a columnist and policy adviser for the Future of Freedom Foundation, an associated scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and a columnist, blogger, and book reviewer at LewRockwell.com. He is also the author of Social Insecurity and The War on Drugs Is a War on Freedom. His newest books are War, Christianity, and the State: Essays on the Follies of Christian Militarism and War, Empire, and the Military: Essays on the Follies of War and U.S. Foreign Policy.

View all posts

Our Books

Shop books published by the Libertarian Institute.

libetarian institute longsleeve shirt

Support via Amazon Smile

Our Books

libertarian inst books

Recent Articles

Recent

TGIF: “You Didn’t Build That”

TGIF: “You Didn’t Build That”

Remember Barack Obama's profound 2012 campaign speech about success? Here's part of what he said: There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me -- because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t -- look, if you’ve been successful,...

read more

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This