End the war on drugs and release the prisoners
A group of police and judges who want to legalize drugs pointed to new FBI numbers released today as evidence that the “war on drugs” is a failure that can never be won. The data, from the FBI’s “Crime in the United States” report, shows that in 2008 there were 1,702,537 arrests for drug law violations, or one drug arrest every 18 seconds.
September 17th, 2009 at 11:38 am
From the linked page:
Last December, LEAP commissioned a report by a Harvard University economist which found that legalizing and regulating drugs would inject $77 billion a year into the struggling U.S. economy.
Now that is just absurd: the money spent on drugs is already part of the U.S. economy. I suspect they meant “… inject $77 billion a year into the struggling government treasury.
September 17th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
Here in CA they’re anticipating an Federal 3-panel Judges’ order to release up to 57,000 prisoners – there’s no way that ALL of that group can be just mild-mannered pot-smokers – a large percentage of the CA prison population are illegal alien-criminals.
Because the State’s budget crisis has resulted in a shrunken police force in many jurisdictions the burden on the already over-taxed Parole Office will be overwhelming – it’s an increase beyond their ability to handle it, and with the immanent threat to public safety some county sheriffs are considering increasing the number of CCW’s available.