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Comment by MikeAmelung | Hacker News Reader

Don't even know why I'm going to bother, but most of those drug offenses are trafficking crack/cocaine and meth, a large percentage of them also involve weapons. It's not people who were smoking weed on the porch.

https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/dofp12.pdf

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You're being very selective. Federal prison only accounts for 22.3% of drug offending inmates[0]. Specifically in jails -- where 74% of occupants are not currently charged -- possession accounts for 56% of drug related offenses. Drugs accounts for 21% of occupants, (23% of convictions, 25.5% of non-convicted). In state prisons possession accounts for 25.5% of drug related offenses and 3.5% of the total state prison.

Jails, County, State, and Federal prisons are all different. It would definitely make sense that the more serious convictions, especially with harder drugs, goes to federal. That's kinda the point of federal...

[0] https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html

Back to the preventive vs reactive. If you legalize all drugs, sell the harsh drugs in a controlled setting, the existing black markets would be destroyed. This argument will continue to be a circle, if we are saying "x people arrested" but "y shouldnt be a crime in the first place" "well y has to be illegal, look how much x we have."

All of the money put into cops, lawyers, prosecution, sentencing, prison, parole, etc could be put into tackling the consequences of legal use.

All of the money currently flowing into the black market, into gangs, into crime and violence causers, would try up.

4 in 10 arrests are marijuana related of those "As has long been the case, around nine-in-ten U.S. marijuana arrests are for possessing the drug, rather than selling or manufacturing it."

How many of those that graduated to crack/meth etc. started out with simple marijuana arrests?

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/01/22/four-in-ten...

I don't know, I was just pointing out the fact that people in federal prison are not there for smoking weed on the porch. I don't have the numbers handy, but I would guess that a vast majority of the marijuana arrests in your article result in a fine or probation at the very most.

Which I happen to agree is a waste of resources and probably does more harm than good by getting people started "in the system".

The difference is looking at federal prisons vs arrests and other prisons. Federal is for more egregious crimes, so it would make sense that less of them are for pot and more for harsher drugs.

It is difficult, but we have to try to be aware of the biases in the data we have. I should have mentioned in my first post that those were just federal stats. But I try to break down more in another comment state and jails, specifically about possession statistics.

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