cannabisnews.com: Feds Overdose on Drug Arrests





Feds Overdose on Drug Arrests
Posted by CN Staff on December 01, 2004 at 13:11:02 PT
By Paul Armentano, AlterNet
Source: AlterNet
Think the government's self-proclaimed 'war on terror' has diverted attention from its much longer and costlier 'war on drugs'? Think again. Law enforcement arrested a record 1,678,192 US citizens for drug abuse violations in 2003, according to data published in October in the FBI's annual Uniform Crime Report.
The arrest total surpassed the previous year's total by more than 100,000, and is 33 percent greater than the total number of Americans arrested on drug charges a decade ago. Put another way, an American is now arrested every 19 seconds for violating the nation's drug laws.The staggering UCR totals come just weeks after a Department of Justice report concluded that post-9/11 reprioritization has forced several federal law enforcement agencies, specifically the FBI, to shift their focus away from drug law enforcement. But while that may be the case for the FBI, the 2003 data makes it apparent that law enforcement in general, and state and local police in particular, are targeting and arresting drug offenders with unprecedented gusto.Those offenders most likely to feel the brunt of law enforcement are small-time marijuana offenders. According to the FBI's data, police arrested 755,187 persons in 2003 for violating pot laws. That figure is the highest ever recorded by law enforcement, and far exceeds the total number of arrests last year for all violent crimes combined, including murder, manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault.Of those US citizens charged with pot violations, 88 percent – some 662,886 Americans – were charged solely with the crime of marijuana possession. The remaining 92,301 individuals were charged with "sale/manufacture," a category that includes all cultivation offenses, even those where the marijuana was grown for personal or, in some cases, medical use.More than any other drug-related violation, pot arrests have increased in recent years at a staggering clip – rising from less than 300,000 in 1991 to today's record levels. As a result, more Americans have been arrested in the past decade on pot charges than the combined populations of Alaska, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming.But according to a forthcoming report from the NORML Foundation, this dramatic increase in arrests has not been associated with "reduced marijuana use, reduced marijuana availability, a reduction in the number of new users, ... any reduction in marijuana potency, or any increases in the price of marijuana."Rather, "marijuana arrests have [had] the opposite effect on every major policy objective they are intended to influence." (The same criticism could be lodged against the drug war as a whole, as similar increases in purity and demand and availability, along with a decrease in price, have been noted in recent years for most other illicit drugs, specifically cocaine and heroin.)Despite record deficits and the terrorism threat, the Bush administration (and, for that matter, the overwhelming majority of Congress) are unwilling to question the wisdom of spending unprecedented hours of police time and, literally, billions of state and federal taxpayer dollars to arrest and prosecute non-violent drug offenders. (NORML places the state and local criminal justice costs of marijuana arrests at $7.6 billion – more than 25 percent of the total fiscal amount states spend on all anti-drug related enforcement; the feds spend an additional $21+ billion annually on the drug war.)Voters in more than a dozen states over the past seven years have approved numerous initiatives eliminating jail time for various non-violent drug offenses, and national polls show that three out of four Americans support depenalizing (no arrest, no jail) pot possession. That figure is the highest level of public support ever recorded in support of decriminalization.In this climate, it's clear that politicians and law enforcement are fast becoming isolated in their support for their behemoth "war on drugs." Having grown so gargantuan in size, it appears all but destined to eventually collapse under the force of its own weight. Paul Armentano is the senior policy analyst for the NORML Foundation in Washington, DC.Source: AlterNet (US)Author: Paul Armentano, AlterNetPublished: December 01, 2004Copyright: 2004 Independent Media InstituteContact: letters alternet.org Website: http://www.alternet.org/DL: http://alternet.org/drugreporter/20633/Related Article & Web Site:NORMLhttp://www.norml.org/Marijuana Arrests Hit Record Highhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread19708.shtmlCannabisNews -- NORML Archiveshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/list/NORML.shtml
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Comment #3 posted by FoM on December 01, 2004 at 19:12:20 PT
AP: High Court Agrees to Block Religious Tea 
By Gina Holland, The Associated Press December 01, 2004WASHINGTON (AP) — The Bush administration on Wednesday won a Supreme Court stay that blocks a New Mexico church from using hallucinogenic tea that the government contends is illegal and potentially dangerous.  
 The government has been in a long-running legal fight with the Brazil-based O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal over hoasca tea, brewed from plants found in the Amazon River Basin.The church won a preliminary injunction in a lower court, and the Supreme Court was asked to intervene.Justice Stephen Breyer, acting on behalf of the full court, granted a temporary stay to give both sides time to file more arguments with the court."Compliance with the injunction would force the United States to go into violation of an international treaty designed to prevent drug trafficking worldwide, which could have both short- and long-term foreign relations costs and could impair the policing of transnational drug trafficking involving the most dangerous controlled substances," acting Solicitor General Paul Clement wrote in a court filing.The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver found that the church probably has a religious-freedom right to use the tea. The Bush administration plans to appeal, but wants the church barred from using the tea in the meantime.The church's leader had sued after federal agents raided his office in Santa Fe in 1999 and seized 30 gallons of hoasca tea. The tea contains DMT, a controlled substance.The Bush administration already has one drug appeal at the Supreme Court. Justices heard arguments earlier this week in that case, which asks whether the federal government can prosecute patients who smoke marijuana on doctors' orders and in states that have medical marijuana laws.The case is Ashcroft v. O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal, A-469.Copyright 2004 The Associated Presshttp://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/10315763.htm
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Comment #2 posted by Craiig on December 01, 2004 at 15:29:59 PT
stubborn fookers
they just won't leave people in peace. It's like an addiction. I think they need help.
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Comment #1 posted by FoM on December 01, 2004 at 13:56:35 PT
AP: Supreme Court Urged to Block Religious Tea
December 01, 2004WASHINGTON - The Bush administration asked the Supreme Court on Wednesday to stop a New Mexico church from using hallucinogenic tea while the government appeals a decision backing the church.The government has been in a long-running legal fight with the Brazil-based O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal over hoasca tea, brewed from plants found in the Amazon River Basin.The church won a preliminary injunction in a lower court, and justices were asked to intervene."Compliance with the injunction would force the United States to go into violation of an international treaty designed to prevent drug trafficking worldwide, which could have both short- and long-term foreign relations costs and could impair the policing of transnational drug trafficking involving the most dangerous controlled substances," acting Solicitor General Paul Clement wrote in a court filing.The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver has found that the church probably has a religious-freedom right to use the tea.The church's leader had sued after federal agents raided his office in Santa Fe in 1999 and seized 30 gallons of hoasca tea. The tea contains DMT, a controlled substance.The Bush administration already has one drug appeal at the Supreme Court. Justices heard arguments earlier this week in that case, which asks whether the federal government can prosecute patients who smoke marijuana on doctors' orders and in states that have medical marijuana laws.The case is Ashcroft v. O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal, A-469. 
Copyright: 2004 Associated Press http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/news/local/10314345.htm
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