Wow, what a response I've received for calling out 4/20 celebration when so many cannabis enthusiasts are locked up! You'd think I wrote drug law myself to oppress the world. Or at least tried my best to oppress those partaking in cannabis. I'm happy to report that neither is true... but I would like to see more action taken towards the legalization/decriminalization of all drugs, cannabis amongst them.

I do believe that the cultural attachments to 4/20 make it a liability to reform. I don't think 4/20 celebration works to appropriate it towards the legalization movement. I think it counterproductive. I think if we stopped the celebration though, and put our collective noses to the grind, it could be a great day to actually work towards reform, with the understanding that once the war on cannabis is over, we'll have great cause to celebrate (and the remainder of the year work on all other aspects of the drug war, from needle exchanges, which SAVE LIVES, to Good Samaritan Laws, which SAVE LIVES, to diversion programs, which appear to be the necessary evil apparatus to get one step closer to collective liberation).

Evidently, my line about believing people should be able to do with their bodies whatever they want didn't get accepted as the gospel I intended it to be. I can't ask you to, since it would be a weird call to criminal activity, and thus could attach liability, but I will say for those celebrating in private: more power to you.

However, this post is about numbers, namely, the numbers that demonstrate my _lack_ of conflation around cannabis prohibition and prison/jail populations.

For the record:

State: 253,300 for drug offenses
Federal: 95,446 for drug offenses

The numbers here show about 350,000 in prison for specific drug offenses (not counting property crime), with 50,000 in state for marijuana alone, and 30,000 in the federal for marijuana alone. Bear in mind that multi-drug offenses are not classified as marijuana offenses, even though the primary point of contact is in many of these cases cannabis.

Jail populations: 25% in 2005 for drug offenses

Total revolving jail population for 2005: 780,000. That's 195,000 for drug offenses. And estimated at 90% for marijuana-related offenses.

"Although people may think that the Drug War targets drug smugglers and 'King Pins,' in 2007, 47.4 percent of the 1,841,182 total arrests for drug abuse violations were for marijuana -- a total of 872,720. Of those, 775,137 people were arrested for marijuana possession alone."

"For the people arrested, mostly young Blacks and Latinos, the 24 hours in
police custody and jail is a humiliating, degrading, alienating experience." [Marijuana Arrest Crusade]

The numbers are from the annual report from the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics:

"In some states as many as 40 percent of prison admissions have been probation or parole violators. In Michigan, for instance, a recent study found that the growth in prison admissions from 1990 to 1997 was 41 percent for parole violators and 33 percent for probation violators.

In California, the proportion entering prison last year for parole violations was just under 70 percent"

So, while exact numbers are not knowable with the current statistic taking, at the bare minimum 80,000 in prison for marijuana alone. An unknown amount in prison for cannabis use as reason for parole/probation revocation (but if you take an average prison population, and with the exception of California's 70% over-representation of parole violators in prison, go with an average of 40%, then take the percentage attributed to failed/noncompliance on UA's), but a low-ball estimate is another 30,000. With California having a 70% recidivism rate, and 175,000 prisoner population, this figure could be safely about 10-15,000 higher, but I'm really lowballing here.

Over 870,000 arrests for marijuana alone - usually resulting in at least booking, if not a longer stay in jail, with a rolling average of 180,000 in for marijuana alone (multi-drug arrests classified with the "harder" drug no matter what the quantity), we're already over 300,000, and that's the lowball figure with rolling averages.

Not included: halfway houses, home confinement, forced rehab (which is custody, mind you, just medical instead of criminal, but is usually similarly oppressive, and in my book still 'locked up' especially since most are court-ordered, for addictions that don't exist). If anyone wants to guess at this number, I'm welcome to it. It looks like, at first blush, to be in the hundreds of thousands.

When I say over 500,000 co-cannabis enthusiasts are locked up during 420, I really do mean it, and I don't think it an exaggeration. When a lowball figure comes up with safely over 300,000 for marijuana alone (not counting multidrug cases, or other offenses whereby marijuana was involved) in prisons and jails, and an unknown but certainly in the hundreds of thousands enforced residential treatment, you best believe that the real number is at least twice that (especially if we count cannabis as point of contact for law enforcement).