For Terry Breen: The stats that are usually referred to are the % of people in prison whose crime was somehow connected with alcohol/other drugs or were under the influence of something when they committed their crime. The % gets much higher, usually about 80%. Or at least that's what they use when they are trying to justify more drug LE or even treatment. Another point: equating treatment and SAFPF is laughable. (SAFPF is the correct way of saying it, not SAFE-P) Substance Abuse Felony Punishment Facility. And if you're saying they have a pretty dismal record, you're right. This thread buttresses the fact that there are no easy answers; there are good points and against legalization, even for mj. I'm a substance abuse counselor, not a prosecutor, but I like pre-trial diversion with some education and counseling for small time POCS or POM. Deferred doesn't do what it's supposed to as all of you know.

The stats I used come from "Profile of Nonviolent Offenders Exiting State Prisons," Oct. 2004 NCJ 207081 which was published by the US Dept. of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics.

This fact sheet catagorized the convicts leaving prison according to the offense they were convicted of--not self reporting by inmates about what was the root cause of their going to the joint. In the 15 states it looked at, of the "non-violent" convicts being released, 40.6% had been under sentence for property crimes; 36.8% had done time for drug offenses; and 22.5% had served sentences for Public-order crimes (this included DWI).

You hear it all the time: our prisons are filled up with minor drug abusers, and there's no room to house the truly bad guys, the violent offenders, and there is no way we can build enough prisons to house all the minor dopers, bla, bla, bla.

All this hand-wringing is based on a false premise. Only about a third of the inmates are doing time for drug offenses. The vast majority of these are drug dealers, altho their conviction may only be for possession. The number of inmates doing prison time for mere possession of a small amount of personal use narcotic, is exceedingly small--and everyone of those small time users who ended up in prison probably were working over time to get sent to the joint.

As I understand the argument for legalization (and the comparisons with alcohol and the rise of the Mafia), the three major problems are corruption, violence, and consumption. If drugs were legalized and controlled, the problem would be reduced to consumption. The Mexican law doesn't solve ANY of these problems, since presumably the cartels will be supplying these legal drugs.

As for whether we are winning the war on drugs: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2086.html
The USA is the "world's largest consumer of cocaine (shipped from Colombia through Mexico and the Caribbean), Colombian heroin, and Mexican heroin and marijuana; major consumer of ecstasy and Mexican methamphetamine; minor consumer of high-quality Southeast Asian heroin; illicit producer of cannabis, marijuana, depressants, stimulants, hallucinogens, and methamphetamine; money-laundering center."

To go back to BLeonard's opening post on this topic, it seems to me that the rule of law (and we are officers of the law 24/7) is being undermined by a pervasive hypocrisy regarding drugs in our society.

[This message was edited by Etta Warman on 08-30-09 at .]