872,721 joints of weed on the wall! 872,721 joints of weed~

In 2007,  there were 872,721 marijuana related arrests in the United States.

Alone, this is just a number.  It doesn’t say how many second or multiple offender arrests that is, it doesn’t show what punishments were given or fines feed.  What it does show is that almost 1 out of every 300 Americans (including children and the elderly) get arrested every year for something related to marijuana.  However, I don’t even care about that.  What I care about is the amount of man-power behind those numbers: man-power is time, time is money.

Any way you look at it, those ~870 thousand arrests took some effort, paperwork, and in some situations, a warrant and jail time.  This is tax-payer money at work.  Of course, I don’t mean this to sound that “we should legalize all crimes so that way we don’t have to fund arrests, etc.”  What I mean is that for a substance which exhibits properties that cause almost no damage to oneself, one’s surroundings, and the well-being of others, 870,000 is an astounding amount of arrests to fund.

Marijuana is a Schedule I drug, as defined by the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act: 1) High potential for abuse.  2) No accepted medical use.  3) Lack of accepted safety for use of the drug under medical supervision.  A substance has to meet these standards to be classified as Schedule I.  Does marijuana meet these guidelines?  Part 1 can be questioned: substance abuse in the sense of psychological (“wow I enjoyed that, I’ll do it again”) or physiological (“I need some more to feel normal again”).  Does the abuse consider the danger levels of the substance?  Do any of the schedules? Nope.  I think that alone should be a major qualifier in if a substance should be legally “feared”.  The second point is also questionable.  Some current studies are starting to find medicinal use for marijuana for alleviation of cancer or chemotherapy symptoms.  And finally, point 3, which has been seen as outright wrong.  If marijuana was so potentially life threatening, we’d be seeing a considerable amounts of deaths and hospital trips resulting from its use.  Instead, we see the exact opposite: we see few and far between, even among the “drug” community.

If marijuana were to be categorized in the Scheduling system, the only spot it could potentially fit is… well… it couldn’t even fit any of the categories fully.  Marijuana exhibits marginally low potential for dependence when put in comparison with legal substances like caffeine, alcohol, and tobacco.  My vote: make marijuana an un-scheduled but controlled substance (similar to latter two examples).

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Some nations, such as Canada and the Netherlands, have passed laws to decriminalize the personal use and possession of marijuana (lots of stipulations, can be summarized here).

Netherlands/Canada:

Pros: drug crime rates, addiction rates, rehabilitation rates, and drug misuse rates are lower than most other countries; generates state revenue.

Cons: controversial, may perpetuate “gateway effect”, crime rates from exportation of drugs may increase.

Current model in the US/EU:

Pros: may help prevent “gateway effect” to harder substances, prevents “soft drug” usage and trade.

Cons: funding intensive, rarely achieves desired effect, crime rates higher, higher rates for repeat offender and addiction; emphasis on prevention, not treatment.

I have a rule of thumb that I use to determine whether or not a liberty should be granted: if the act is dangerous to others at a rate which is unacceptable then it should be illegal, otherwise, it should be legal (with respective and according methods of control).

-M.