If I had a dime for every time A law enforcement officer claimed that busting petty pot offenders wasn't their priority, then I might have enough loose change to compensate each of the 829,625 Americans arrested for marijuana violations in 2006.
Of course, like most statistics related to the war on drugs, the 2006 arrest data -- released earlier today by the FBI -- raises far more questions than answers.
For instance: If busting minor marijuana offenders -- of those charged with pot violations in 2006, approximately 89 percent (some 738,915 Americans) were charged with possession only -- isn't a law enforcement priority, then why have pot busts increased nearly 200 percent over the past 15 years, increasing from a modern low of 287,850 in 1991 to the all-time record high set last year?
Police will tell you that it's because there's a whole lot more Americans using pot these days. However, America's top drug cop -- US Drug Czar John Walters -- says differently, bragging earlier this month that pot use has been declining for the past five years. (Curiously, pot arrests have increased more than 15 percent during this time.)
Not surprisingly, the Czar is contradicted by his own statistics. Specifically, recently published survey data compiled by the federal Office of Applied Studies (OAS) indicates that the number of reported 'regular' users of pot (defined as having used the drug at least once over a 30-day period) has actually increased slightly -- from 14.6 million users in 2005 to 14.8 million in 2006. (Archived federal survey data indicates that this total has hovered consistently around 14 to 15 million users for most of the past decade.)
Nevertheless, if the overall number of regular pot users has remained stagnant at a mere 14 million or so over the past few years, then just who the hell is making up the 700,000 to 800,000 Americans being arrested each year for smoking weed? After all, if we're to take both the FBI and OAS data at face value, then one could assume that some 8 million Americans -- or more than half of the American pot smoking population -- have been busted over the past ten years!
Or, one can conclude that the federal survey's supposed pot data -- much like the claims of the Drug Czar and local law enforcement -- is most likely just a crock.
Paul Armentano is the senior policy analyst for NORML and the NORML Foundation. He may be contacted via e-mail at: paul@norml.org
