POT ARRESTS AT RECORD HIGH IN U.S. LAST YEAR, FBI SAYS

At Same Time, Hard-Drug Cases Declined Slightly

Marijuana arrests in the United States rose 5 percent last year to a
record 872,721, according to the FBI.

Marijuana arrests now comprise 47.5 percent of national drug arrests,
up from 43.9 percent in 2006, the FBI said.

The 2007 total was more than 43,000 above the previous year's 829,627
marijuana arrests.

Tom Riley, spokesman for the federal Office of National Drug Control
Policy, said he believed changes in societal perceptions of marijuana
may be driving the rising arrest counts.

While the drug was historically considered a "soft drug" by many
Americans, Riley said, many American communities are now taking
marijuana more seriously.

"For a long time we had a cultural blind spot in America about
marijuana," he said. "Society is not just winking and looking the
other way anymore."

The FBI's 2007 crime report, which compiles data from 17,000 law
enforcement agencies, said total U.S. drug arrests declined in 2007 --
dipping to 1,841,182 from 1,889,810 a year earlier -- despite the jump
in marijuana-related arrests. The marijuana statistics included
increases in both cases of possession -- which represented about 89
percent of all marijuana arrests -- and arrests for the sale or
manufacture of the drug.

In contrast, arrest levels for heroin, cocaine and their derivatives
fell slightly during the same time period.

Those doing jail time for marijuana possession represent less than 0.5
percent of the U.S. prison population. These offenders were generally
arrested for possessing mass quantities of the drug, Riley said.

Riley also said some marijuana arrests may actually represent cases in
which offenders were suspected of more serious offenses, but law
enforcement officials chose to charge them with marijuana possession
because it was easier to prove.

"A lot of times somebody is drunk driving and they have marijuana on
them, and it's a marijuana arrest," Riley said. "It's not hard to
accumulate a large number of these arrests without it reflecting an
actual policy change."

Allen St. Pierre, executive director of NORML, a group advocating
legalization of marijuana, speculated that the increase in marijuana
arrests may be the result of federal justice assistance grant systems,
which he said push local police to meet certain performance levels,
rather than focusing on the harder drug offenses they would prefer to
pursue.

"My supposition is if the federal government stops spending all this
money on incentivizing local police to make this arrest, there will
likely be for the first time in a decade a turn down in marijuana
arrests," he said.