snakopolis

Driven by the Drug War, the U.S. prison population is six to ten times as high as most Western European nations. The United States is a close second only to Russia in its rate of incarceration per 100,000 people. In 2000, more than 734,000 people were arrested in this country for marijuana-related offenses alone.

The US war on drugs places great emphasis on arresting people for smoking marijuana. Since 1990, nearly 5.9 million Americans have been arrested on marijuana charges, a greater number than the entire populations of Alaska, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming combined. In 2000, state and local law enforcement arrested 734,498 people for marijuana violations. This is an increase of 800 percent since 1980, and is the highest ever recorded by the FBI.

As has been the case throughout the 1990s, the overwhelming majority of those charged with marijuana violations in 2000– 646,042 Americans (88 ) — were for simple possession. The remaining 12 (88,456 Americans) were for “sale/manufacture”, an FBI category which includes marijuana grown for personal use or purely medical purposes. These new FBI statistics indicate that one marijuana smoker is arrested every 45 seconds in America. Taken together, the total number of marijuana arrests for 2000 far exceeded the combined number of arrests for violent crimes, including murder, manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault.

ANNUAL AMERICAN DEATHS CAUSED BY DRUGS

TOBACCO …………………… 400,000
ALCOHOL …………………… 100,000
ALL LEGAL DRUGS ………….20,000
ALL ILLEGAL DRUGS ……….15,000
CAFFEINE …………………….2,000
ASPIRIN ………………………500
MARIJUANA …………………. 0
—————————————-
Source: United States government…
National Institute on Drug Abuse,
Bureau of Mortality Statistics