Drug Czar Walters: People in prison for marijuana are like “unicorns”
Monday, September 15th, 2008 at 5:38 pm | By: Radical Russ
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!
[...] Possession of a single joint carries a penalty of $1,000 and a year in prison – a charge faced by about 800,000 American citizens every year. This is the government whose judgment on war and economics we are supposed to [...]
Actually he’s not lying, necessarily, about this. If you look at the number of people actually prosecuted and put in jail, drug dealers vastly outnumber people in jail for simple possession. Check out the U.S Sentencing Commission report:
http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook/pdf/t5392008.pdf
People sentenced in Federal court for possession make up just 1.1 percent of all drug offenders.
Sorry, it is a lie, unless 1.1% of all animals out there are unicorns. Approx. 40,000 people are in prison on marijuana charges alone, and that doesn’t count the people who are back in prison on parole or probation violations for being caught smoking a joint. Also, understand that “drug dealers” is a catch-all term for anyone caught with “possession with intent to deliver”, when that can mean a guy with his own stash separated into separate bags (could be different strains) or caught with postal scales, lots of baggies, or a legal registered firearm in the home. “Drug dealers” are also marijuana gardeners tending their own plants who are considered “manufacturers” and also fit into that “drug dealer” category.
In fact, very few of the people who sell marijuana are what we’d think of as “drug dealers”. Most sell only weed and occasionally shrooms, mostly to a tight community of friends and acquaintances. Very few are the “Tony Montana” powder-pushing, weapon-hording multimillionaire smugglers the term “drug dealer” evokes.
Even if no simple marijuana possessors are in prison, so what? They are still arrested, and the “drug criminal” scarlet letter follows them throughout their lives, keeping them from the best jobs, housing, and education, and threatening their homes, child custody, visitation, security clearances, and reputation. If pot possessors are so little a threat that none are in prison, why are we bothering to arrest them?
Also, you should note that’s federal numbers, when most people incarcerated for marijuana are in state prisons and county jails.
[...] Possession of a single joint carries a penalty of $1,000 and a year in prison – a charge faced by about 800,000 American citizens every year. This is the government whose judgment on war and economics we are supposed to [...]
[...] Possession of a single joint carries a penalty of $1,000 and a year in prison – a charge faced by about 800,000 American citizens every year. This is the government whose judgment on war and economics we are supposed to [...]
[...] is actually in jail for marijuana-related offenses. Ah yes, the “unicorn” theory. Never mind those 50,000 or state and federal inmates serving time for pot offenses the U.S. [...]
[...] is actually in jail for marijuana-related offenses. Ah yes, the “unicorn” theory. Never mind those 50,000 or state and federal inmates serving time for pot offenses the U.S. [...]
Decriminalization dos not pay the bills for the sectorially controlling lobby’s and their constituents in The rural parts of the state of Arizona. the drug war is now two or three generations deep and predominantly controlled By the L.D.S.Church.We have no voice and haven’t for a long time.They have circumvented Our laws and votes.What is a felony here is a petty crime elsewhere including lager city’s in the same state.I know by personnel experience They have taken My activism as personal threat to there personal income and have dropped the hammer on Me and others.I don’t know how they did it but they manged to keep My medical use out of My appeal.
No. The Drug Czar is required by law to lie about marijuana. Seriously.
I love how the Czar’s sound-bites fly in the face of the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report. Who is correct?
If the Czar is lying, which I believe he is, how can he be called on it? Is there a legal process that he can be forced into testifying under oath?
If he is spreading misinformation deliberately, can he be removed from office forcibly?