Myth: Legalization will free up time, space, money, and effort in our criminal justice and law enforcement systems; current prohibition of marijuana is far too expensive and incarcerates far too many low-level users. FACT: This is false. Even the pro-legalization magazine Rolling Stone backs this point up when they wrote: “Less than one percent [of inmates incarcerated in state and federal prisons] are in for [marijuana] possession alone.” Federal and State Data: According to the Uniform Crime Reports issued by the FBI and the US Department of Justice, law enforcement officials arrest about 11,302,102 people nationally each year. Of those, drug arrests constitute about 13% (1,501,043 arrests) and less than 6% are for a marijuana offense. Marijuana offenses of all types – possession, growing and distribution – constitute less than half of all drug arrests, numbering approximately 690,479 each year. Arizona law enforcement arrests a total of approximately 284,543 crimes per year. The total number of arrests involving marijuana in Arizona is approximately 16,656. This closely mirrors the national data of just under 6% of all arrests. Arizona Incarceration Rates for Marijuana: The claim of overzealous imprisonment and arrest simply doesn’t match the facts. As of July 2015, the total number of prisoners in Arizona was 42,758. While a current breakdown is not available, in 2013 only 131 prisoners were in our state prison for marijuana possession/use as the highest offense (.03% of the total population). Given the likelihood that most of these offenders pled down from a higher offense, the number of first time possession of marijuana offenders is lower. These low numbers are the result of a law Arizonans passed in 1996 — called Proposition 200 – that prohibits the incarceration of those found guilty of first and second-time possession of an illegal substance (except methamphetamine) and mandates instead that they undergo appropriate substance abuse counseling and treatment. If they successfully complete their drug treatment program, most will have their convictions reversed. Bottom line - with very few exceptions, Arizona has not sent first and second time simple possessors of marijuana to prison for almost 20 years. The Larger Point Is This: To make a dangerous product legal is to make it more available and more widely used. That is why more adults—as well as underage teenagers—use and abuse alcohol in far greater numbers than they do marijuana. Legalized marijuana would cause a series of both foreseen and unforeseen negative consequences including higher costs of substance abuse treatment, higher costs of hospital admissions, higher costs of negative education consequences, higher costs due to accidents, and higher costs to health care. www.ArizonansForResponsibleDrugPolicy.org
NSDUH 2013
PAID FOR BY ARIZONANS FOR RESPONSIBLE DRUG POLICY, an Arizona Political Action Committee
Comparison of Marijuana Arrests to Alcohol Arrests
2008
The organizers of the legalization effort in Arizona call themselves “The Campaign to Regulate Marijuana like Alcohol.” It is illuminating to compare the cost of legal alcohol to marijuana. Every year, there are approximately 1,166,824 DUI arrests in this country, another 354,872 liquor law violation arrests, and another 443,527 public drunkenness violation arrests. That’s 1,965,223 arrests based on alcohol violations alone - 31% more arrests for alcohol-related crimes than all drug crimes combined.
When we isolate marijuana-related arrests per year, it is easy to see we arrest more than twice as many people for alcohol violations in this country than for marijuana. If saving law enforcement resources and expenses is the argument to make marijuana legal like alcohol, the result will be an increase in marijuana-related arrests, not a decrease. Clemency Grant by President Obama Was A Bust: Perhaps this is why with all the discussion and effort by the federal government to release prisoners unjustly incarcerated for “low level” drug crimes, the total number President Barack Obama recently released by grant of clemency was 46. In other words, of the nearly 207,000 inmates in federal incarceration, the administration looked high and low to find those whose drug sentences were unjust or overly harsh and found a total of 46, or .02 of one percent. And who were these 46? They “mostly involved cocaine trafficking,” and where marijuana was involved, other drugs were as well. The only prisoner exclusively held for marijuana violations was imprisoned for conspiracy and intent to distribute over 1,000 marijuana plants. SOURCES: http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/lists/top-10-marijuanamyths-and-facts-20120822/myth-prisons-are-full-of-people-infor-marijuana-possession-19691231. https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/ crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/persons-arrested/persons-arrested. https://corrections.az.gov/reports-documents/reports/ corrections-glance http://www.azdps.gov/About/Reports/docs/ Crime_In_Arizona_Report_2013.pdf. Arizona Prosecuting Attorneys’ Advisory Council, Prisoners in Arizona: A 2014 Update on Selected Topics (2014). Page 21. http://www.pcao.pima.gov/documents/Prisoners%20in%20Arizona-033010.pdf https://www.regulatemarijuanainarizona.org. https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/tables/table-29/ table_29_estimated_number_of_arrests_united_states_2013.xls http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/07/13/obama-clemency-46-men-and-women-facebook/30086127/ http://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/population_statistics.jsp http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/07/13/prisoners--commuted-sentences/30094231/