POT PRISONERS COST AMERICANS $1 BILLION A YEAR

The latest numbers are out: nearly 800,000 Americans were arrested on
marijuana charges in 2005. When will the insanity stop?

American taxpayers are now spending more than a billion dollars per
year to incarcerate its citizens for pot. That's according to
statistics recently released by the U.S. Department of Justice's
Bureau of Justice Statistics.

According to the new BJS report, "Drug Use and Dependence, State and
Federal Prisoners, 2004," 12.7 percent of state inmates and 12.4
percent of federal inmates incarcerated for drug violations are
serving time for marijuana offenses. Combining these percentages with
separate U.S. Department of Justice statistics on the total number of
state and federal drug prisoners suggests that there are now about
33,655 state inmates and 10,785 federal inmates behind bars for
marijuana offenses. The report failed to include estimates on the
percentage of inmates incarcerated in county and/or local jails for
pot-related offenses.

Multiplying these totals by U.S. DOJ prison expenditure data reveals
that taxpayers are spending more than $1 billion annually to imprison
pot offenders.

The new report is noteworthy because it undermines the common claim
from law enforcement officers and bureaucrats, specifically White
House drug czar John Walters, that few, if any, Americans are
incarcerated for marijuana-related offenses.

In reality, nearly 1 out of 8 U.S. drug prisoners are locked up for pot.

Of course, several hundred thousand more Americans are arrested each
year for violating marijuana laws, costing taxpayers another $8
billion dollars annually in criminal justice costs.

According to the most recent figures available from the FBI, police
arrested an estimated 786,545 people on marijuana charges in 2005 --
more than twice the number of Americans arrested just 12 years ago.
Among those arrested, about 88 percent -- some 696,074 Americans --
were charged with possession only. The remaining 90,471 individuals
were charged with "sale/manufacture," a category that includes all
cultivation offenses, even those where the marijuana was being grown
for personal or medical use.

These totals are the highest ever recorded by the FBI, and make up
42.6 percent of all drug arrests in the United States. Nevertheless,
self-reported pot use by adults, as well as the ready availability of
marijuana on the black market, remains virtually unchanged.

Marijuana isn't a harmless substance, and those who argue for a
change in the drug's legal status do not claim it to be. However,
pot's relative risks to the user and society are arguably fewer than
those of alcohol and tobacco, and they do not warrant the expenses
associated with targeting, arresting and prosecuting hundreds of
thousands of Americans every year.

According to federal statistics, about 94 million Americans -- that's
40 percent of the U.S. population age 12 or older -- self-identify as
having used cannabis at some point in their lives, and relatively few
acknowledge having suffered significant deleterious health effects
due to their use. America's public policies should reflect this
reality, not deny it. It makes no sense to continue to treat nearly
half of all Americans as criminals.

This article originally appeared in the Washington Examiner.