Criminal News

A report has just been released finding that almost half of all drug arrests in the United States are attributed to marijuana arrests, which costs $4 billion a year to catch, prosecute and incarcerate offenders.

The report by The Sentencing Project found that as of 2002, marijuana arrests comprised 45 percent of all drug arrests. The co-author of the report, Ryan King, believes the "war on drugs" has been shifted specifically to a war on marijuana, and said the large number of marijuana arrests at an annual cost of $4 billion is poor investment in public safety and diverted resources from more serious crime problems.

Jennifer Devallance of the White House drug policy office said it was not fair to paint the "war on drugs" as focused on just marijuana, but did note that it is the most abused drug in the U.S. and the single largest source of treatment, which deserves focus. The Sentencing Project said the use of marijuana by high school seniors nearly tripled to six percent from 2.2 percent during the years of 1990 to 2002, with arrests increasing by just 10 percent.

Of the 734,000 marijuana arrests in 2000, just six percent resulted in felony conviction. The group's data was released at the same time the U.S. government's Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration said in a report that adults who first used marijuana before the age of 12 were twice as likely to suffer from mental illness later in life than those who used the drug at age 18 or older.