Big hat tip to Dan and Aaron out at the MPP Blog who asked two questions of Drug Czar John Walters at his press conference last week for the release of the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Go check out the videos, they’re only 3:30 each and watching Walters rhetorically slither around, over, and past MPP’s questions is watching political doublespeak spin at its finest. I just had to bring you a couple of gems from the Drug Czar.
We just announced that 872,721 Americans were arrested for marijuana in 2007, and of those arrests, 89% or 775,138 were arrests for simple possession, this according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report for 2007. Well, according to Walters, after all these arrests – over 5 million during the Bush Administration – nobody goes to jail for simple possession. He says “first-time, non violent” offenders in prison for possession of marijuana are like “unicorns”.
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After all, according to Walters, “we didn’t arrest 800,000″ people for marijuana last year.
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Walters wants you to think all the people arrested for marijuana were (a) pleading their case down from a larger cultivation or trafficking charge, (b) involved in some other sort of violent crime, or (c) involved in a driving while intoxicated charge.
(a) If they’re pleading down charges, you sure are letting a whole lot of growers and traffickers avoid serious jail time (thanks, I guess) – so how is it that you’re so lenient on the marijuana growers/sellers (11% of marijuana arrests) but so tough on the heroin/cocaine traffickers (27% of heroin/cocaine arrests) and the meth/Ecstasy labs (31% of meth/Ecstasy arrests)? You might lead people to believe you don’t think marijuana is as bad as those other drugs, don’t you think?
(b) If you’re arresting them for violent crimes and then tacking on the marijuana charges, how is it your violent crime arrests have remained steady or declined while marijuana charges have increased, and how is it you have fewer violent crime arrests than marijuana arrests?
(c) If these are all DUI-related, how is it that DUI arrests have dropped 1.8% in the past ten years while marijuana arrests have increased by 28% over the same period of time?
I know! There must have been a huge increase in the number of drunk-driving, gun-toting, pot-growing unicorns over the past ten years!
[...] is driving the present drug war,” NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano said. “Those who claim otherwise would be better off advocating for a long-overdue reprioritization law enforcement resources and [...]
[...] Following up on “The David Evans Inequality”, I wanted to puncture another talking point of the prohibitionist. This is the claim that we really don’t lock up anybody for marijuana in prison – it’s as rare as finding a unicorn, as Drug Czar Walters once said. [...]
I am an adamant supporter of legalization. However, something occurred to me the other night. If federal laws do indeed get reformed, and large numbers of people are released from incarceration, what exactly will that do to the unemployment rate and the economy? This is one reason why I don’t believe the government will ever fully legalize it. In this society the bottom line is always the almighty dollar. Sad but true.
[...] cringe every time a prohibitionist says we don’t throw non-violent marijuana offenders in prison. We do, actually, but what the prohibitionist never acknowledges is that some of the horrible [...]
[...] is driving the present drug war,” NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano said. “Those who claim otherwise would be better off advocating for a long-overdue reprioritization law enforcement resources and [...]
[...] when John Walters said finding a first-time, non-violent offender behind bars for simple possession of marijuana was like [...]