Subj: US: Marijuana Incarceration Stats



Pubdate: Fri, 01 Oct 1999



Source: Reason Magazine (US)





US - MARIJUANA INCARCERATION STATS



Although marijuana is the main target of the war on drugs as measured

by arrests, people often assume that it's not the kind of thing you go

to prison for.  Yet calculations based on recent government data

indicate that some 59,300 people, 3.3 percent of the country's

incarcerated population, are behind bars for marijuana-related

offenses such as cultivation, possession, and sales.  Chuck Thomas of

the Marijuana Policy Project offers this estimate and shows how he

derived it in the June 1999 issue of the "Drug Policy Analysis

Bulletin", published by the Federation of American Scientists and

available at http://www.fas.org/drugs/issue7.htm .