Cannabis legalization throughout the United States over the last couple of years has convinced most Americans that the War on Marijuana is close to over. This couldn’t be further from the truth; earlier this week, the FBI released crime statistics that show that people are still being prosecuted at a much more severe rate for marijuana than they are for other drugs. According to the report, the police have made over 700,000 arrests because of marijuana in 2014, the first year marijuana-related arrests have grown since 2009. This larger number of people being arrested does not show a major uprising in the manner that cops in prohibition areas are handling marijuana, but they have actually been more forceful on enforcing marijuana.
This is alarming since public opinion has shown that most of the nation supports legalizing marijuana. Even more of an eye-opener, however, is that most of these arrests weren’t made because of trafficking or dealing, but simply for possession. 88% of the arrests made in 2014 were people who simply had marijuana in their possession. Only 5% of arrests were for larger crimes involving distribution and cultivations. This would mean that 600,000 people were put in jail for having a drug that is now legal, or at the very least, decriminalized in over half of the country.
“These numbers refute the myth that nobody actually gets arrested for using marijuana,” said Mason Tvert, a member of the Marijuana Policy Project. “It’s hard to imagine why more people were arrested for marijuana possession when fewer people than ever believe it should be a crime.”
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