Despite Huge Increase in Marijuana Busts, Pot Smokers Seem Undeterred

The total
number of marijuana arrests in the United States, which rose
dramatically from about 288,000 in 1991 to a peak of 873,000 in
2007, has declined since then, reaching 750,000 in 2012. But
according to a
new analysis by Jon Gettman, a former national director of
NORML who is now a professor of criminal justice at Shenandoah
University in Virginia, arrest rates have continued to rise in 16
states and the District of Columbia. Nationwide, the number of
arrests per 100,000 residents more than doubled between 1991 and
2012. The overwhelming majority of those arrests (88 percent in
2012) involved simple possession, indicating that consumers have
borne the brunt of this cannabis crackdown. Yet the huge increase
in pot busts does not
seem to have had much of a deterrent effect.

According to National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (NHSDA),
the number of people who reported using marijuana in the previous
year rose and fell through the 1990s as arrests steadily climbed.
In the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, which began in 2002,
that number was fairly flat until 2009, despite continued increases
in arrests. It rose steadily from 2009 through 2012, the last year
for which data are available. In the Monitoring
the Future Study, annual prevalence of marijuana use by high
school seniors rose from 24 percent in 1991 to 36 percent in 2012.
This does not look like a drug policy that is working.

In 2012, Gettman found, the jurisdictions with the highest
marijuana arrest rates were the District to Columbia (729 per
100,000 residents), New York (577), Louisiana (451), Illinois
(447), and Nebraska (421). The national average was 239. Measured
by the share of annual users arrested, Louisiana led the pack at
6.4 percent, followed closely by New York at 6 percent, then
Maryland (5.8 percent), Nebraska (5.5 percent), and Wyoming (5.1
percent). The national average was 2.8 percent. The jurisdictions
that saw the biggest average annual increases in their arrest rates
between 2008 and 2012 were South Carolina (13.1 percent), D.C. (9.4
percent), South Dakota (8.3 percent), North Dakota (7.8 percent),
and Utah (5.6 percent).

Those states, along with a dozen others, bucked the national
trend: For the country as a whole, the marijuana arrest rate per
100,000 fell by an annual average of 3.8 percent between 2008 and
2012. The states with the biggest annual decreases were
Massachusetts (29.1 percent), California (27.9 percent), Alabama
(22.9 percent), Washington (18.7 percent), and Connecticut (18.7
percent). Gettman notes that “the reduction in California and
Massachusetts is due to the replacement of criminal penalties
for possession with civil penalties.”

Gettman’s
report is full of interesting data and well worth a closer
look. (So is his new website, RegulatingCannabis.com).
“Over the last two decades,” Gettman concludes, “marijuana arrests
and marijuana arrest rates have doubled, and at great expense
to both the public and the individuals arrested….Marijuana
arrests have increased significantly, and in many states they
continue to increase. The other important fact is that despite
these arrests marijuana use has been increasing over the last
decade….In light of their failure to curb the increase in
marijuana use the costs and benefits of marijuana arrests, and
who bears them, require greater study.”