Non-violent drug offenders clog prisons all over the United States. Nothing has driven the boom in prison construction as much as government efforts to crack down on drug use. In New York City alone, there are 150 drug possession arrests made every day. Even if only one third of those people went to jail, that would add up to over 18,000 New Yorkers every year in jail for drug possession. In 2001, there were 723, 627 marijuana related arrests in the United States. Of these arrests, 88.6 percent of them were for mere possession only. This number has steadily increased every year from about 350,000 arrests in 1992. Also, since 1992, over six million people have been arrested on marijuana charges. Legalization proponents suggest that the government should enroll these offenders in treatment programs instead of sending them to jail. This makes perfect sense considering that it currently costs about 30,000 dollars a year to keep a person in jail, while the most intensive drug-treatment programs cost 20,000 dollars per person a year. Also, a person emerging from a treatment program has a better chance of “succeeding” in life, compared to a convicted felon who has to try and get a job with a criminal record. An ex-prisoner is also likely to have continued their drug habit in prison thus leaving the person worse off than when they entered the prison.

Why does the government insist on spending billions of dollars every year towards keeping a useful plant off the streets? I was watching Cops the other day and I saw something that made me furious about how our system works. A man was set up and surveyed buying a twenty-dollar sack of pot. After the transaction was made, police swarmed around the man’s car and, screaming at him told him, to get out of the car and put his hands up. His person and vehicle were searched and nothing other than the bag was found. This man was probably in his mid-fifties and a cancer patient. He had a morphine pump inside his body that was surgically placed there to help him with pain. The policemen asked the man how long he had been smoking and he responded saying, “just since the cancer treatment”. They took him away wearing handcuffs in the squad car to the station and charged him with possession. Is this

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