Drukgz

I was planning on putting together a polemic "hip-hopera" on our great nation's War on Drugs and the impotence and hypocrisy therein, but I came across something much simpler in the Economist that I could plagiarize and still get the general point across, thus saving me about 4 hours during which I can instead work sedulously and exacerbate my slightly sore throat and stuffy nose... RUN-ON!!!!



"NEARLY 1.9m people were arrested in America for drug offences in 2006—over three times the number detained in 1980. Around one in eight arrests is now drug related. But what they achieve in the "war on drugs" is unclear, according to a report by The Sentencing Project, an advocacy group. Fewer people take drugs: 14% of people reported using them monthly in 1979, but only 8% in 2005. But arrests are increasingly for more trivial crimes: in 2006 only 17.5% of arrests were made for the sale or manufacture of drugs, whereas some 39% were for the possession of marijuana. "

- Economist, October 09, 2007

So, over 700,000 people were arrested for having some weed in 2006, while 1.4 million were arrested for drunk driving (2004). Weed killed nobody, but drunk driving killed over 17,000 people. Hmm.