arrests

The war on marijuana continues to rage in Pennsylvania. Despite slow progress in loosening the commonwealth's laws on the devil's lettuce – including a new medical cannabis products law and municipal decriminalization ordinances in its two largest cities, its state capital, and the borough that...

Though marijuana is now legal in 29 states for either medical or recreational use, the number of arrests involving marijuana have actually increased across the country. Those numbers come from the Uniformed Crime Report compiled by the FBI from data sent to the agency from law enforcement...

Marijuana busts increased last year, with nearly 600,000 people being arrested on a possession charge–a staggering number that costs taxpayers billions of dollars even as the vast majority of Americans support legalization of the drug. The new arrest data, released Monday by the FBI, comes...

As reported earlier, new FBI data reveals that drug arrests increased in the United States last year. But due to a change in how the annual law enforcement numbers are publicized, it is now harder to determine how many people were busted for marijuana or other drugs specifically. Nonetheless...

With Pennsylvania teetering on the edge of another budget cliff, it is immensely clear to me that we must get creative in finding long-term revenue solutions to prevent total financial collapse. Last month, as a short-term fix to the state's cash-flow woes, I cosigned a $750 million loan from...

California has a long history as the Golden State and as the "Green State" because its marijuana history spans over a century, all the way back to the Poison Act of 1907. The Poison and Pharmacy Act of 1907 banned the sale of opium, cocaine, and morphine without a prescription. In 1913, an...

Despite Mayor Bill de Blasio's repeated promises to end arrests for low-level marijuana possession, the NYPD is on track to arrest tens of thousands of pot-smoking New Yorkers this year, with enforcement once again overwhelmingly centered on minority communities. New data from the Legal Aid...

In 2015, Michigan arrests for marijuana were more common than arrests for shoplifting. Police made 23,893 arrests involving marijuana in 2015, about 9% of all arrests, according to Michigan State Police data. Marijuana is the No. 1 illicit drug of choice in Michigan, experts say. An...

New York City was scaling back its stop-and-frisk program even before a federal judge ruled in 2013 that the tactics underlying it violated the constitutional rights of minority citizens. It's hard not to look at marijuana arrests today without thinking of that saga. Although the city has...

Arrests for the public use of marijuana in the District nearly tripled in 2016 and are on track to remain high in 2017, public records show. More than 400 people were arrested in 2016 for public consumption of marijuana, according to D.C. police arrest records obtained through a Freedom of...

If you lined up every person who had been arrested on marijuana charges in the Garden State since 2000, according to a new report from the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, they would stretch the entire length of the New Jersey Turnpike -- and into Maryland. The advocacy...

An upstart challenger for the New York City mayor's office is calling out Bill de Blasio's "baffling" claim that the city has ended marijuana arrests – and he's pushing for the city to decriminalize possession of the drug. The mayor made the comments during a talk at a Democratic...

There were 19,730 people arrested in Pennsylvania last year for having less than 30 grams of marijuana. That is equal to heroin, cocaine, meth, opiates, and all other drug possession arrests combined, according to my new review of data in the Pennsylvania Uniform Crime Reporting System...

Arrests for low levels of marijuana possession were up in 2016, despite City Hall's insistence that it has focused on reducing the amount of arrests and prosecutions for the offense. According to statistics first compiled by Politico, the NYPD racked up 17,762 arrests in 2016, a ten percent rise...

Counties across Pennsylvania are arresting people for marijuana possession at record levels even as police departments in the Commonwealth's largest cities are adopting decriminalization procedures. So why are arrests increasing? To find out, I crunched data, made nice charts, and asked local...

As troubled as our country is at the moment, divided between two main mutually contemptuous (and contemptible) political blocs, facing a rising generation seemingly frightened by the exchange of ideas inherent in a devotion to protecting free speech, and apparently committed to placing either a...

Boston - Since the decriminalization of marijuana possession in Massachusetts, racial disparities in marijuana arrests have persisted, disproportionately hurting African-Americans and Latinos. Supporters of the legalization of recreational marijuana are pointing to the racial disparities as...

Boston — Eight years after Massachusetts voted to decriminalize the possession of less than an ounce of marijuana, racial disparities in arrests for marijuana possession have continued, a report from the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts found, and they disproportionately affect...

According to a new crime report published last week by the FBI, the Drug War is still a pervasive cause for arrest in the United States. The data, which covers recorded arrests for violent crime and property crime as disclosed by local police departments, revealed that arrests for simple...

As nine states prepare to vote on legalize or decriminalization marijuana laws on Election Day, the FBI reported a significant decrease in the number of arrests made for cannabis possession and sales. The latest statistics report, which was released Monday, also indicated the majority of the...