A pot smoker is arrested every 40 seconds in America

Thanks to Rantin Ron for pointing me to this story that I'm just getting around to posting. It's the same old news but the statistics get worse every year

Police in the United States made a record number of arrests in 2005 according to the FBI's annual Uniform Crime Report. The 786,545 people arrested for marijuana violations made up 42.6 percent of all drug arrests, and more arrests the total number for all violent crimes combined, including murder, manslaughter, and rape, robbery and assault.

NORML executive director Allen St. Pierre said in response to the latest figures, "These numbers belie the myth that police do not target and arrest minor marijuana offenders," said NORML Executive Director Allen St. Pierre, who noted that at current rates, a marijuana smoker is arrested every 40 seconds in America. "This effort is a tremendous waste of criminal justice resources that diverts law enforcement personnel away from focusing on serious and violent crime, including the war on terrorism. ...Enforcing marijuana prohibition costs taxpayers between $10 billion and $12 billion annually and has led to the arrest of nearly 18 million Americans."

Think about that. A simple cannabis consumer, who is hurting no one and is no threat to your health and safety, is arrested every 40 seconds while "heroin and cocaine arrests have declined sharply." Is it because people are using less heroin and coke? NO! It's because it's easiest to bust a pot smoker and all law enforcement cares about it the stats so they can justify their government grants, not to mention the forfeiture angle. Most pot smokers tend to more successful and productive than heroin addicts and have more and better property to seize. Property I remind you, the cops get to keep and use to finance the purchase of even more militaristic equipment in order to trap a growing number of non-violent cannabis consumers.

I'm sure you see the Catch-22 in this scheme. I continue to believe that if we abolished the forfeiture laws you would see a big drop in unreasonable drug busts simply because without the financial incentive, it wouldn't be worth the cop's time to pursue it.