... has been at least 80% for more than a decade, and it has been rising throughout the 1990s. The total number of annual marijuana arrests, having dipped in the 1980s, has been rising sharply since 1992 (MacCoun, Rueter, 2001). It is often asserted that these arrests rarely lead to any substantial penalty, and that therefore the costs of the current high-arrest policy ... behind bars, at a total cost to taxpayers of some $1.2 billion per year. They represent almost 12% of the total federal prison population and about 2.7% of the state prison population. Of the people incarcerated in federa...

• Word Count: 2648
• Approx Pages: 11
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... and its Impact on Use). Other countries that have already decriminalized marijuana have continued doing studies on their population's usage of marijuana and other drugs. The Netherlands has officially tolerated the cultivation, sale, and possession of small amounts of marijuana. Marijuana in the Netherlands is still technically illegal, but a policy of prosecutional discretion has allowed more than 1000 retail ... . New York professors Lynn Zimmer, Ph.D. and John Morgan, M.D. compared usage rates among young people in the US to the usage rates by the same age groups in the Netherlands. ...

• Word Count: 1417
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... heart rates, and has the potential to trigger severe anxiety, paranoia, and lethargy (www.ndsn.com). Yet I also feel its effects are in many ways less harmful than those of alcohol and tobacco-for instance, alcohol's potential to cause cirrhosis and tobacco's links to lung cancer and ... the large amounts of money spent on enforcement and prosecution, and prison overcrowding. The percentage of the American population living in prison has increased from .061 in 1880 to .1 in 1920 to .35 in 1995, with an associated tripling of real tax dollars required to house inmates. Today, 62% of all...

• Word Count: 1532
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: Undergraduate