THE DRUG WAR'S LATEST TALLY: 872,721 POT ARRESTS, AN ALL-TIME HIGH

Cannabis Arrests Now Comprise Nearly 47.5 Percent of All Drug Arrests
in the United States, 89% of Them for Mere Possession.

If denial is the first sign of addiction, then Drug Czar John Walters
is hooked to the gills. He's addicted to targeting and arresting
marijuana consumers, and he'll do and say anything to keep this
irrational and punitive policy in place.

Speaking earlier this month on C-Span, the reigning Czar stretched
his usual deceit to outrageous new heights. Responding to a question
from the Marijuana Policy Project's Dan Bernath, Walters flatly
denied the charge that over 800,000 Americans are arrested annually
for violating pot laws.

"We didn't arrest 800,000 marijuana users," Walters proclaimed.
"That's [a] lie."

If only it were.

According to data released yesterday in the FBI's annual Uniform
Crime Report, police in 2007 arrested over 872,000 US citizens -
that's nearly one out of every two Americans busted for illicit drugs
- -- for weed. (The raw data is available from the US Federal Bureau of
Investigation here http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2007/arrests/index.html
and here. http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2007/data/table_29.html ) That
figure is a five percent increase over the total number of Americans
busted in 2006. It's more than three times the number of citizens
charged with pot violations sixteen years ago.

Of those arrested in 2007, 89 percent - some 775,000 Americans --
were charged with simple pot possession, not trafficking,
cultivation, or sale. (By comparison, 27 percent of those arrested
for heroin and cocaine offenses were charged with sales.) Three out
of four were under age 30; one in four were 18-years-old or younger.

The FBI's tally is the highest marijuana arrest total ever-reported
in law enforcement history. If this pace continues, annual arrests
for pot will surpass one million per year by 2010.

But to hear America's top drug cop tell it few, if any, citizens are
ever arrested for pot possession, and absolutely no one goes to jail
for breaking marijuana laws.

"The fact is today, people don't go to jail for the possession of
marijuana," Walters alleged on C-Span. "Finding somebody in jail or
prison for possession of marijuana is like finding a unicorn. It
doesn't exist."

Not true says the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice
Statistics, which reported last year in black and white -- perhaps
the Drug Czar is reading impaired - that 12.7 percent of state
inmates and 12.4 percent of federal inmates incarcerated for drug
abuse 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, at a minimum, 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 or local jails for pot-related offenses, nor
did it take into account the number of inmates serving time for
violating the terms of their marijuana-related probation, such as
those who submitted a 'dirty' urine to their parole officer.)

No matter how one slices it, that's a lot of unicorns.

It also begs the question: Why does the Drug Czar feel the need to go
to such absurd lengths to hide this overt outgrowth of American drug
policy? After all, the US Drug Enforcement Administration and the
White House Office of National Drug Control Policy typically issue
chest-thumping press releases when they achieve record busts for
offenses involving cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine? Why then do
they shy away from making similar proclamations for pot?

Perhaps it's because, deep down, even the Drug Czar knows that the
use of cannabis does not pose anywhere near the health and safety
threat as does the use of other intoxicants, including alcohol, and
that most Americans - rightly - would be outraged to learn that our
nation's so-called war on drugs is really just an assault on young
adults caught with small bags of weed.