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February 10, 2006
Sentencing Project: "The War on Marijuana: The Transformation of the War on Drugs in the 1990's"
This paper was published originally last year but now it is published din the Harm Reduction Journal.
The Sentencing Project is pleased to announce that its policy report, “The War on Marijuana: The Transformation of the War on Drugs in the 1990s,” by Ryan King and Marc Mauer, has just been published in the Harm Reduction Journal, at http://www.harmreductionjournal.com/content/pdf/1477-7517-3-6.pdf. The paper finds that 82% of the 450,000 increase in drug arrests from 1990-2002 was for marijuana offenses, and that 88% of the 700,000 annual marijuana arrests are for possession offenses. Overall, the cost of marijuana enforcement and incarceration totals an estimated $4 billion a year. The authors contend that record levels of marijuana arrests have diverted resources from more effective strategies to reduce drug abuse and crime.
Posted by lois at February 10, 2006 10:07 AM