The War on Drugs is A War on Us!

Many times I have heard the argument that the "War on Drugs" is focusing the US law enforcement power and process on high-level traffickers, foreign cartels, violent gang members and other hard core criminal elements but the statistics show that claim to be a lie.

The FBI's own stats from 2006 show there were 829,627 marijuana arrests but 89% of those arrests were for simple possession only. No violence, no gun crimes, no trafficking, nothing more that simple possession.

Let me emphasize those numbers.

2006 Marijuana Arrests:

829,627

89% of those arrested were 

for simple possession only.

(Source: F.B.I. Uniform Drug Reports, "Crime in the United States, 2006," table 29 and 'Arrests for Drug Abuse Violations.)

So why would law enforcement continue to go after pot smokers when there are so many more serious criminals that they could be spending their time on? I have heard several theories but the argument that makes the most sense is that arresting small time pot smokers is basically a full-employment strategy for law enforcement. Busting pot smokers ensures that law enforcement can maintain their federal budgets for the War on Americans--oops, I mean the War on Drugs, they can keep the jails full which keeps the prison-industrial complex happy which feeds money back into the political campaigns of the politicians who keep funding more prisons and maintains the simplistic and wrong-headed "Get tough on crime" mentality that lubricates the broken justice system.

It is time to end this false war and let adults decide what is best for them to put in their bodies.