POT: THE SINA QUA NON OF A DRUG WAR

The war on drugs was the first major test by the country's elite to see if
Americans would willingly surrender their constitutional rights. It turned
out that they would and so for the past twenty years invasions of civil
liberties increased, America threw more and more of its young people into
prison, while exploding drug war budgets did nothing to stem the growth of
the drug industry. Further, the drug war was a useful testing ground for
repressive measures instituted following September 11.

But to make all of this work you need a sufficient quantity of drugs, they
had to be easy to find and a sufficient number of people had to use them.
This is where marijuana came in. Although marijuana is far less danger than
such legal drugs as cigarettes and alcohol and, even as a medical
prescription, far less hazardous than ones routinely given out by doctors,
it had the constituency, physical bulk and ubiquity to make it just the
thing for adding to police budgets and taking away from human rights.

The war on drugs will undoubtedly be regarded by historians as a crucial
precursor of the end of the First American Republic. It tested the waters
of repression and found Americans willing to accept it. Even liberals
outside of strong civil liberties advocates proved disastrously indifferent
to what was going on.

A new report from the Sentencing Project ( see
http://www.sentencingproject.org/pdfs/waronmarijuana.pdf ) tells part of
the story as it relates to marijuana:

. Of the 450,000 increase in drug arrests during the period 1990-2002, 82%
of the growth was for marijuana, and 79% was for marijuana possession alone;

. Marijuana arrests now constitute nearly half (45%) of the 1.5 million
drug arrests annually;

. Few marijuana arrests are for serious offending: of the 734,000 marijuana
arrests in 2000, only 41,000 (6%) resulted in a felony conviction;

. Marijuana arrests increased by 113% between 1990 and 2002, while overall
arrests decreased by 3%; 1 Cooper, G. (2001, August 20).

. New York City experienced an 882% growth in marijuana arrests, including
an increase of 2,461% for possession offenses;

. African Americans are disproportionately affected by marijuana arrests,
representing 14% of marijuana users in the general population, but 30% of
arrests;

. One-third of persons convicted for a marijuana felony in state court are
sentenced to prison;

. An estimated $4 billion is spent annually on the arrest, prosecution and
incarceration of marijuana offenders.