Reform Cuts Marijuana Possession Arrests 86%

[SHRED]

Reform Cuts Marijuana Possession Arrests 86% in 2011, Upends California Drug Policing
Posted on 10 December 2012

By Mike Males

Just-released 2011 arrest statistics from the state Criminal Justice Statistics Center show that pioneering legislation downgrading simple marijuana possession from a criminal offense into an infraction - an effort to deter passage of Proposition 19, which would have legalized marijuana outright - has detonated a revolution in California drug-law enforcement.

California's new arrest figures read like something out of a drug policy reformer's dream - but with unexpected twists (see graphics). Arrests for marijuana possession plummeted by 86%, from 54,900 in 2010 to 7,800 in 2011, abruptly reversing a two-decade trend of increasing marijuana misdemeanor arrests and returning numbers to levels not seen since before the Summer of Love.

In fact, California's reform is likely to prove much more effective in reducing simple marijuana arrests than Proposition 19, or Washington's and Oregon's marijuana legalization initiatives passed this year. Those legalization schemes, by continuing to arrest those under age 21 for pot, will cut marijuana arrests by less than 50%.

http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/site/reform-cuts-marijuana-possession-arrests-86-2011-upends-california-drug-policing


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[Bjorn Against]

1. They need to be lowered 100% but things are at least moving in the right direction

[bemildred]

2. Making possession completely legal will reduce possession arrests to zero.

Last edited Thu Dec 13, 2012, 11:55 AM - Edit history (1)

Very simple and cheap to implement too.

[Bluenorthwest]

3. Considering Oregon did NOT pass a legalization initiative this year as the author claims

I am hesitant to agree with the conclusions reached on the basis of a 'scheme' that did not in fact pass. Colorado passed one. Washington as well. Not Oregon. So I have to ask where the author is getting his figures about the results of a law we did not pass being less effective than California's law. He is comparing it to a law that does not exist.
How can a person write for the public and make such glaring mistakes?

[DCKit]

4. "How can a person write for the public and make such glaring mistakes? "

See:
Fox News
The Washington Post
The Washington Times
The New York Times
The Wall St. Journal

The Enquirer is often more accurate.

[Bluenorthwest]

5. FoxNews is rarely cited here with glowing framing...

Males is a professor, and he spends much time criticizing others for 'innacuracy'. Yet here, he is unable to differentiate between Colorado and Oregon. He has no idea what happend in the election. Yet that does not prevent him from making up things and drawing conclusions from it.
He's not a media figure, and his positions should be solidly researched. His title is in fact 'senior researcher for the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice'.
Here is a quote from Males about Michale Moore: "Like libertarian O’Rourke, Moore is funny, presents good ironic imagery, and makes incisive-sounding commentary. Moore’s only problem, like O’Rourke’s, is that he’s horrendously inaccurate, and an awful grandstander."
Moore is inaccurate? But Males can write an entire screed based on a lie, that Oregon passed a legaliztion bill that is not as good as CA's decrim? This piece is about as inaccurate as it could be.

[SHRED]

6. perhaps ask the author?

[Bluenorthwest]

7. Why would I waste my time correcting him? 'Senior Researcher' is his title.

It is amusing to read this cat's attacks on others for being 'inaccurate'. I don't know if he is citing the Colorado law as if it was Oregon's, or if he is reading the bill we in Oregon rejected and claiming in professorial tones that we passed a law he does not like. Is his issue with the actual law, in actual Colorado, or is it with the rejected initiative in Oregon? That's my entire point is that the author has made no point at all because his facts are so deeply incorrect on a basic level.
When a person claims they are a serious reseacher, and yet they pontificate long and hard on a subject that they very clearly have not done a bit of research on, I just laugh and discount that person's words now and in the future. I'm not going to volunteer to wipe the egg off his face.