More Arrests for Pot than Violent Crimes [Infographic]

In the United States, the number of arrests for marijuana possession now exceeds the number of arrests for all violent crimes combined. The Huffington Post infographic below illustrates the surprising statistics provided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Judge Richard A. Posner, a Chicago law school professor and Reagan-appointed jurist on the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, said Thursday that the criminalization of marijuana is “really absurd,” explaining that he sees no difference between the currently-criminalized substance and cigarettes.

10) MARIJUANA USE HAS NO EFFECT ON MORTALITY:
A massive study of California HMO members funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) found marijuana use caused no significant increase in mortality. Tobacco use was associated with increased risk of death. Sidney, S et al. Marijuana Use and Mortality. American Journal of Public Health. Vol. 87 No. 4, April 1997. p. 585-590. Sept. 2002.

Florida inmates convicted of non-violent drug crimes spent 194 percent more time behind bars in 2009 than they did in 1990, costing the state billions of dollars but providing little public safety benefit, a new study found. The study, by the Pew Center on the States, examined trends in 35 states that provided data on incarceration for inmates convicted of violent crimes, property crimes and drug offenses. It found that nationally, state inmates across all categories of offenses served an average of nine additional months in custody, a rise of 36 percent since 1990.

Allegations about official complicity in the drug business are nothing new when they come from activists, professors, campaigners or even former officials. However, an official spokesman for the authorities in one of Mexico's most violent states - one which directly borders Texas - going on the record with such accusations is unique.

Bryan-College Station Judge John Delaney reported that probation officers in Brazos County had told him that passage of the bill, with its removal of incarceration and therefore of probation, would devastate their offices. Why? Because almost half of the county’s misdemeanor probationers have been convicted of possession of less than two ounces of marijuana. “We live off our under-two-ounce misdemeanor guys. They pay the rent.”

On Thursday, Washington became the first state to officially legalize marijuana, soon to be followed by Colorado as their new laws legalizing the drug for recreational use go into effect. A survey out Friday shows what Americans want the federal government to do about the states whose drug laws clash with national laws: Leave them alone. Fifty-one percent of Americans in the new HuffPost/YouGov poll said that in the two states that have legalized marijuana use for adults, the federal government should exempt any adults following state laws from federal drug law enforcement.

Northern California pot growers bomb a car and a bus, then take over Shasta Dam in a bid to free an imprisoned comrade. It sounds like the plot to a very cheesy Grade-B thriller, but it was actually the premise for a day-long terrorist attack drill conducted by 20 state, local, and federal law enforcement agencies Wednesday.

In a recent Open Neurology Journal article, four University of California at San Diego researchers review the evidence concerning marijuana's medical utility and conclude that its continued classification as a Schedule I drug is "not tenable." But the DEA's classification of marijuana has been destroyed many times in the past. Twenty-four years ago, an administrative law judge, responding to a legal challenge initiated in 1972, recommended that marijuana be taken off Schedule I, calling it "one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man."

In the past 11 years, the NYPD spent more than one million hours making more than 400,000 arrests for low-level marijuana possession, a new report has found. The report raises questions about the use of police resources, which could likely be better spent addressing serious crimes in the high-crime neighborhoods where many marijuana arrests occur.