Prisons are not crowded with small-time drug users

His Majesty Gov. Jesse Ventura is preoccupied these days with the idea of
legalizing drugs and prostitution. He talks about one or both several times
a month, and more frequently of late. It was in the heat of a tirade about
the benefits of legalizing prostitution that the governor, in his Playboy
interview, was inspired to lash out at organized religion.

Last month the governor broadcast his weekly radio show from the Shakopee
women's prison, largely to create a sympathetic background for criticizing
tough anti-drug laws. He repeated his view that prisons should be for
violent felons and we're only protecting drug offenders from themselves by
imprisoning them.

One could come away from this with an impression drug-legalization
advocates often seem eager to create -- that our prisons are filled with
small-time drug users. Perhaps a few facts would come in handy.

According to the Minnesota Corrections Department, 864 drug offenders were
in state custody (prison or work release) as of July 1, making up 15
percent of all state prisoners. More than half of them were committed to
state custody for trafficking in hard drugs.

Of the 47 percent of drug inmates committed for ``possession'' offenses
(that's just 7 percent of the total state prison population), two-thirds
possessed such large quantities that they were almost certainly drug
dealers, even though they weren't convicted as such.

Less than 4 percent of drug offenders (that's half of 1 percent of the
total state prison population) were committed for marijuana offenses --
virtually always for trafficking.

Federal prisons, it is true, house far larger proportions of drug
offenders. But there, too, dealers vastly outnumber users. More
importantly, federal prisons contain only a tiny fraction of the nation's
inmates. While many other states also incarcerate more drug offenders (and
more criminals generally) than Minnesota does, the fact remains that
America's inmates are in fact mostly violent criminals, while most drug
inmates are serious traffickers -- not innocent users who harm only
themselves.

There are respectable arguments for drug decriminalization. But let's keep
the facts straight about the effects of the drug policies we have.