The title of this post is the title of this new New York Times Upshot piece by Susan Stellin. Here are excerpts:
Despite bipartisan calls to treat drug addiction as a public health issue rather than as a crime — and despite the legalization of marijuana in more states — arrests for drugs increased again last year.
According to estimated crime statistics released by the F.B.I. in September, there were 1,654,282 arrests for drugs in 2018, a number that has increased every year since 2015, after declining over the previous decade. Meanwhile, arrests for violent crime and property crime have continued to trend downward.
Drugs have been the top reason people have been arrested in the United States for at least the past 10 years, and marijuana has been the top drug involved in those arrests. The percentage of drug arrests that have been for possession (instead of for sale or manufacturing charges) has also risen, to 86 percent last year from around 67 percent in 1989. And the majority of drug arrests have involved small quantities.
“We’ve gotten so used to the idea that this is normal to arrest so many people for tiny amounts of drugs, but it’s not normal,” said Joseph E. Kennedy, a professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law who was an author of a paper titled Sharks and Minnows in the War on Drugs: A Study of Quantity, Race and Drug Type in Drug Arrests.
Although many arrests don’t result in conviction — some are dismissed and some result in pleas to a lesser offense — any drug conviction can harm employment, housing and educational prospects. And this continues to disproportionately affect African-Americans and Hispanics, even as many conservatives have joined liberals in saying that racial disparities in the criminal justice system need to be addressed....
It’s not clear why drug arrests are rising after a downturn in those arrests from 2006 to 2015. It may reflect in part a tougher enforcement approach begun under Jeff Sessions by the current administration, even with respect to marijuana. Even in states where marijuana is legal, people can still be arrested if they violate state laws like limits on the amount allowed for personal use. And increasing use nationwide — perhaps with an assumption of more leniency — may put more people at risk of arrest. According to the 2018 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 43.5 million people 12 and older used marijuana in the past year, a number that has risen since 2011.
Public opinion has shifted decisively in favor of marijuana legalization. But Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, pointed out that 39 states haven’t passed laws making recreational marijuana legal, and that police practices and attitudes toward drugs vary among law enforcement agencies across the nation. “Some departments still see arrest as a measure of productivity, even though many of us see that as outdated,” he said.
Mr. Wexler says the overdose epidemic has contributed to how police departments respond to drugs, particularly in communities that lack diversion programs like the one in Seattle. “Today you have more recognition that you need to get people into treatment, but treatment is expensive and resources aren’t equal around the country,” he said, adding that “in many parts of the U.S., arrest is viewed as the only alternative that they have.”...
Better data collection and reporting about drug arrests would help inform policy as attitudes toward the drug war shift, particularly with respect to marijuana. “Anyone who’s spending money and law enforcement resources on this needs to be keeping track of this data,” said Mr. Kennedy, the U.N.C. law professor. “We have a right to know who we are arresting.”
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