Last month, during a
tirade about The Denver Post‘s decision to hire a
marijuana editor, Bill O’Reilly was puzzled by the idea that wine
intoxicates people and treated the notion that a newspaper would
print bar reviews or cocktail recipes as self-evidently absurd.
Yesterday, in another exchange with Fox News commentators Juan
Williams and Mary Katharine Ham, O’Reilly
revealed that he does not know people get arrested for
marijuana possession:
O’Reilly: Primarily, the left embraces the
drug culture to some extent….What is it about the drug
culture…that’s so compelling for some of them?Williams: Well, I don’t think it’s compelling,
but I think that if you start to arrest their children and give
them records and put barriers in front of their futures and their
careers, I think people say, “Wait a second.” As you said in the
previous segment, this is soft drug use. Why are you arresting and
giving this kid a record, especially minority kids.
Disproportionately, they’re the ones who get arrested.O’Reilly: Only dealers, Juan. There’s no
mass arrests of users.Williams: No, no, no, Bill.
Ham: No, users are arrested.
O’Reilly: No, they get a ticket, Juan.
Williams: I don’t think that’s right,
Bill.O’Reilly: No, it is right.
Williams: And I think lots of people fear
for their children. By the way, you should know, it’s not just
liberals—O’Reilly: So by your thinking, then,
people fear for their children so they want to make drugs more
available. Let’s legalize them so they don’t get a rap sheet.Williams: No, no, no, I didn’t say that. I
didn’t say more available. I said, listen, the kid gets out there,
the kid’s involved in soft drugs, by your own definition, gets
arrested. Suddenly he’s got a record, all sorts of things that
would inhibit his or her progress in life.O’Reilly: It’s almost impossible. The records
are expunged if they are juveniles. You know what the game is here.
This is not a crime that is actively pursued by district attorneys.
All right. I’m just going to discount that argument, Juan.
According to the the FBI, police in the United States made about
750,000 marijuana
arrests last year, the vast majority (87 percent) for simple
possession. That is down from a peak of more than 858,000 pot busts
in 2009. From 1996 through 2012, there were more than 12 million
marijuana arrests, accounting for 44 percent of all drug arrests
during that period. More than 11 million of the pot busts involved
simple possession. Pace O’Reilly, those are arrests,
not tickets.
Even when police are supposed to issue a citation for possession
of small amounts, they may find an excuse for an arrest. In New
York City, where O’Reilly works, police managed to make more than 600,000
such arrests from 1996 through 2012, a period when pot busts
skyrocketed even though the state legislature decriminalized
marijuana possession in 1977. Often marijuana is revealed during a
stop-and-frisk encounter, whereupon the cop charges the target with
“public display,” which is a misdemeanor, as opposed to mere
possession, which is a violation.
As Williams pointed out, the people busted for marijuana
possession are disproportionately black and Hispanic, even though
survey data show whites are just as likely to smoke pot. In New
York City, blacks and Hispanics together account for 87 percent of
marijuana arrests, and there are similar disparities in other
jurisdictions. On average, according to a 2013
ACLU report, blacks are about four times as likely as whites to
be arrested for marijuana possession.
In Bill O’Reilly’s world, none of this is happening, which I
suppose helps explain how he can so blithely continue to support
marijuana prohibition.
from Hit & Run http://reason.com/blog/2014/01/07/bill-oreilly-makes-millions-of-marijuana
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