Jacob Sullum has a good piece in Reason about the lousy statistics used by the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) to justify its harmful, wasteful, unhelpful war on drugs.
To bolster the idea that marijuana is more addictive today, the ONDCP notes that “16.1% of drug treatment admissions [in 2006] were for marijuana as the primary drug of abuse,” compared to “6% in 1992.” But referrals from the criminal justice system account for three-fifths of these treatment admissions, and marijuana arrests have increased by more than 150 percent since 1990.
By arresting people for marijuana possession and forcing them into treatment, the government shows why it has to arrest people for marijuana possession. That’s our self-justifying drug policy in a nutshell.