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Hemp Headlines

1. The Emperor of Hemp, Jack Herer, suffers heart attack backstage at Portland Hempstalk
2. Nationwide marijuana arrests down for first time since 2002, but still 2nd highest arrest total ever
3. Police seek grower sales records from Berkeley Patients Group, get nothing

Cannabis Science with Dr. Mitch Earleywine

• Did Jack Herer’s chronic cannabis use help or hurt him with regards to his heart attack?
• Study of anti-marijuana PSAs shows teens more likely to use when they see marijuana use in the ad

Cannabis Community

• Live audio excerpts from Saturday at Portland Hempstalk.

The FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2008 has been released today and the numbers provide us with a few good news / bad news scenarios to report.

Marijuana Arrests 1990-2008

Good news: Marijuana arrests have declined from the previous year.  For the first time since 2002 (and only the 5th time since 1990), there were fewer marijuana arrests in America than the previous year.  Last year, there were 872,721 arrests for marijuana*; this year the figure has dropped to 847,864, a decline of 2.85%.

Bad news: There were 847,864 arrests for marijuana last year, the second-highest total of marijuana arrests ever recorded.  This is two-and-a-half times more arrests for pot than in 1990.  There were more pot arrests than people living in South Dakota.

Good news:  This year, arrests for “drug abuse violations” declined overall, from 1.84 million in 2007 to 1.70 million in 2008.  The proportion of drug arrests to all arrests also dropped, from 13% of all arrests in 2007 to 12.2% of all arrests in 2008.

Half of the "War on Drugs" is a War on Marijuana

Bad news: The number of marijuana arrests as a proportion of all “drug abuse violation” arrests increased from 47% to 49.8% – half of all drug arrests are for selling, manufacturing, or possessing marijuana.  In the Midwest and South, over half of all drug abuse violation arrests were just for possession of marijuana.

Good news: Police seem to be doing a better job on violent crime.  In 2008, here were only 2,500 fewer arrests for homicide, rape, robbery, and assault than 2007.  There were fewer incidents of violent crime in 2008 (1.22 million in 2007, 1.20 million in 2008) and better clearance of violent crimes (44.5% led to arrest in 2007, 45.1% led to arrest in 2008).

Bad news: 89% of all the marijuana arrests were for possession only, meaning there were 754,224 arrests for personal use of marijuana, not selling or cultivating.  The arrests for sales or cultivation of marijuana that make up 11% of all marijuana arrests include those who were growing their own for personal use and medical marijuana grows.  By comparison, there were only 594,911 arrests for the 1.22 million violent crimes committed in America.

Good news: While the number of adults who admit using marijuana in the past year increased by half a million, from 22 million in 2007 to 22.5 million in 2008, the number of arrests for marijuana declined by almost 25,000.  This means now there are 37.46 arrests-per-1000-annual-tokers in 2008 vs. 39.67 in 2007.  This works out to one marijuana arrest every 37 seconds in 2008, rather than every 36 seconds in 2007.

Bad news: The percentage of people under age 18 arrested for “drug abuse violations” remains unchanged at 10.6% of all drug arrests.

*Trying to break the habit of writing “842,864 people arrested”, because these arrests figures could include one person who was arrested multiple times.

# 20 Marijuana Arrests Set New Record | Project Censored

Project Censored announces the Top 25 Most Censored Stories for the last year and our own NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano was recognized (along with MPP’s Bruce Mirken) for coverage of the story of the 2006 FBI Uniform Crime Report showing a fourth straight record number of marijuana arrests (now fifth straight) in America.

Congratulations on the honor, Paul, and thanks for bringing the issue to mainstream attention.

Download the NORML Daily Audio Stash for 2008-09-16

Download audio file (NORML_Daily_AudioStash_2008-09-16.mp3)

You get to hear lots of voices on today’s Stash.  First you get audio from the Dr. Drew radio show, with our own Paul Armentano joining Dr. Drew and Bob Forrest to discuss the FBI’s announcement of the fifth straight all-time record number of marijuana arrests in America.

Then I’ve got audio from the Hemposium at Portland Hempstalk.  NORML Legal Committee attorney John Lucy IV, Oregon NORML Legal Counsel Paul Loney, and NORML Founder and Legal Counsel Keith Stroup took audience questions on marijuana and DUI laws.

NORML’s Deputy Director, Paul Armentano, writing at Alternet.org:

The Drug War’s Latest Tally: 872,721 Pot Arrests, an All-Time High | DrugReporter | AlterNet
Cannabis arrests now comprise nearly 47.5 percent of all drug arrests in the United States, 89% of them for mere possession.

If denial is the first sign of addiction, then Drug Czar John Walters is hooked to the gills. He’s addicted to targeting and arresting marijuana consumers, and he’ll do and say anything to keep this irrational and punitive policy in place.

Speaking earlier this month on C-Span, the reigning Czar stretched his usual deceit to outrageous new heights. Responding to a question from the Marijuana Policy Project’s Dan Bernath, Walters flatly denied the charge that over 800,000 Americans are arrested annually for violating pot laws.

“We didn’t arrest 800,000 marijuana users,” Walters proclaimed. “That’s [a] lie.”

If only it were.

According to data released yesterday in the FBI’s annual Uniform Crime Report, police in 2007 arrested over 872,000 US citizens – that’s nearly one out of every two Americans busted for illicit drugs — for weed. (The raw data is available from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation here and here.) That figure is a five percent increase over the total number of Americans busted in 2006. It’s more than three times the number of citizens charged with pot violations sixteen years ago.

Of those arrested in 2007, 89 percent – some 775,000 Americans — were charged with simple pot possession, not trafficking, cultivation, or sale. (By comparison, 27 percent of those arrested for heroin and cocaine offenses were charged with sales.) Three out of four were under age 30; one in four were 18-years-old or younger.

The FBI’s tally is the highest marijuana arrest total ever-reported in law enforcement history. If this pace continues, annual arrests for pot will surpass one million per year by 2010.

But to hear America’s top drug cop tell it few, if any, citizens are ever arrested for pot possession, and absolutely no one goes to jail for breaking marijuana laws.

“The fact is today, people don’t go to jail for the possession of marijuana,” Walters alleged on C-Span. “Finding somebody in jail or prison for possession of marijuana is like finding a unicorn. It doesn’t exist.”

Not true says the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, which reported last year in black and white — perhaps the Drug Czar is reading impaired – that 12.7 percent of state inmates and 12.4 percent of federal inmates incarcerated for drug abuse violations are serving time for marijuana offenses. Combining these percentages with separate U.S. Department of Justice statistics on the total number of state and federal drug prisoners suggests that, at a minimum, there are now about 33,655 state inmates and 10,785 federal inmates behind bars for marijuana offenses. (The report failed to include estimates on the percentage of inmates incarcerated in county or local jails for pot-related offenses, nor did it take into account the number of inmates serving time for violating the terms of their marijuana-related probation, such as those who submitted a ‘dirty’ urine to their parole officer.)

No matter how one slices it, that’s a lot of unicorns.

It also begs the question: Why does the Drug Czar feel the need to go to such absurd lengths to hide this overt outgrowth of American drug policy? After all, the US Drug Enforcement Administration and the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy typically issue chest-thumping press releases when they achieve record busts for offenses involving cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine? Why then do they shy away from making similar proclamations for pot?

Perhaps it’s because, deep down, even the Drug Czar knows that the use of cannabis does not pose anywhere near the health and safety threat as does the use of other intoxicants, including alcohol, and that most Americans – rightly – would be outraged to learn that our nation’s so-called war on drugs is really just an assault on young adults caught with small bags of weed.

Download the NORML Daily Audio Stash for 2008-09-15

Download audio file (NORML_Daily_AudioStash_2008-09-15.mp3)

Now this has been a day.  The FBI Uniform Crime Report came out and I spent all day digging through websites, researching, linking, creating spiffy charts.  

Then I made a splendid new advert for the NORML Conference, which you’ll hear at the very beginning of the show.  

I’ve also made a sporting new contest for Pass the Stash based on John Walters’ assertion that finding someone in prison for a first-time non-violent marijuana offense is like finding a unicorn.  So if you actually did time, more than just a holding cell at arrest, an actual sentence from a court served in a jail or prison for a first-time non-violent marijuana possession offense, please contact me at stash@norml.org and win our Marijuana Unicorn contest.  You win free stuff, more details in the podcast.  (Can someone send me an original graphic of a green unicorn with a joint for a horn?  I’ll give you some free NORML swag for that, too.)

Allen St. Pierre, NORML’s Executive Director, joins us for another Black Monday to discuss the fifth year in a row marijuana arrests have increased to an all-time record.

Then I’ve unpacked excerpts from two of my speeches at Seattle Hempfest last month, which are also available on video at the Oregon NORML YouTube channel.

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”.

Download audio file (john-walters-mj-prisoners-like-unicorns.mp3)

After all, according to Walters, “we didn’t arrest 800,000″ people for marijuana last year.

Download audio file (john-walters-we-didnt-arrest-800000-mj-users.mp3)

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!