829,000 Arrested in U.S. in 2006 for Marijuana Violations
New government statistics show police arrested a record 829,000 people for marijuana violations last year. According to the group NORML a pot-smoker is now arrested every 38 seconds in the country. The total number of marijuana arrests in the U.S. far exceeded the total number of arrests in the U.S. for all violent crimes combined, including murder, manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault.
i thought i'd add a poll to see what people think on whether it should be legal or not
heres a post of mine from a while back on the plant
and a fav quote of mineme, myself and i wrote:theres lots of different types, crosses of different plants from around the world, but you basically get two types - cannabis indica and cannabis sativa, theres also a third - cannabis ruderalis - which is like a miniature little bonsai type thing. sativa strong plants can have more of an uppy creative cerebral high, where as more indica dominant plants might have more of a body hit, sleepy even, they grow in different parts of the world and have different flowering times, the sativa taking a lot longer ( up to 14 weeks compared to 6/7/8 ) and growing taller
its quite an incredible plant with an amazing history going back thousands of years with so many uses, including medicinal, its one of the few plants that'll grow pretty much anywhere on the planet, the chinese were growing it 8000 years ago and using it for textiles 6000 years ago - the chinese four nearly five thousand years ago in the worlds first medical book referred to cannabis as the superior herb. the word canvas comes from the latin for cannabis as all the early canvas was made from the fibre ( hemp ) even the first bible was made with hemp, muhammed allowed cannabis but banned alchohol, the hindus called it sacred grass and it was one of the five sacred plants of india, even buddha is said to have survived on a diet of the seeds. you can get the seeds and cooking oil in a lot of shops now - its good for you because its high in omega3.
it was nearly a huge industry in america, with the government even creating a film called hemp for victory, before dupont and a number of big petrochemical companys lobbied against it and got it banned ( they had alternative products that the expected hemp revolution would have been competition for ) at the time congress banned it they didn't even realise cannabis was hemp ... funny though because one earlier us president said that all americans should grow it, as he did himself.
so as you might have guessed, i'm for legalisationi, as a responsible human being, will never concede the power to anyone to regulate my choice of what i put into my body, or where i go with my mind. from the skin inwards is my jurisdication, is it not? i choose what may or may not cross that border. here i am the customs agent. i am the coast-guard. i am the sole legal and spiritual government of this territory, and only the laws that i choose to enact within myself are applicable