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IPFS News Link • Drug War

The FBI Just Stopped Publishing Data On America's Ridiculous Marijuana Arrest Rates

• http://www.zerohedge.com, by Carey Wedler

Though the federal agency used to provide breakdowns on the details of these arrests in its annual "Crime in the United States" report - including which drugs were in question and whether the arrests were made over possession or sale - in its latest report, the FBI is withholding specifics.

On Monday, Tom Angell, a contributor at Forbeswrote about the increase in drug arrests across the country, noting that while in 2015 there were 1,488,707 drug arrests ("the highest number of arrests" out of all offenses, according to the FBI), in 2016 the agency reported 1,572,579 arrests for drugs, a figure that again accounted for the highest number of arrests.

Angell notes that "That's an average of one drug arrest every 20 seconds" and that "The total number is up roughly 5.6% from the 1,488,707 arrests for drug crimes in the country in 2015."

According to the 2015 data, 83.9 percent of drug arrests were for possession, and 38.6 percent of those possession arrests were over cannabis, the highest of any drug.


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