More people were arrested for weed possession last year than violent crimes like murder
Police in the United States arrested nearly 70,000 more people for marijuana possession in 2015 than for committing violent crimes.
Officers arrested 505,681 people in 2015 for violent crimes including murder, rape and aggravated assault, compared with the 574,000 arrests police made for possessing weed during that same year, according to a new study from Human Rights Watch and the ACLU.
"Every 25 seconds in the United States, someone is arrested for the simple act of possessing drugs for their personal use," wrote the authors of the report. "And despite officials’ claims that drug laws are meant to curb drug sales, four times as many people are arrested for possessing drugs as are arrested for selling them."
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Nearly half of those drug possession arrests were for marijuana.
That is despite the fact that smoking marijuana for fun is legal in Alaska, Colorado, Oregon and Washington, and smoking it for certain medicinal purposes is legal in nearly half the country.
In fact, in a survey published by Pew Research Center on the same day as the drug criminalization study, 57 percent of American adults said they favored marijuana legalization, compared with 37 percent who said they were against it.
That popularity seems to be translating to political action. Americans will be voting for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton on Nov. 8, but citizens of eight states will also get to choose whether they want to legalize a form of marijuana.
Voters in Arizona, California, Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada will vote for or against legalizing recreational marijuana use, while voters in Arkansas, Florida and Missouri will vote on whether to legalize medicinal marijuana.
President Barack Obama has suggested that if states continue to legalize marijuana, the federal government may soon consider doing the same.
For now, states across the country continue to punish weed possession with charges that can range from misdemeanor to felony.
Black people in the U.S. are disproportionately affected by the way drug laws are enforced.
Though black adults were found to use drugs at the same or lesser rates as their white counterparts, the report found that black adults were 2.5 times more likely to find themselves in handcuffs for carrying drugs. When it comes to marijuana possession, black adults were four times more likely to be arrested than white adults.
The racial disparity is enough to be considered "racial discrimination under international human rights law," according to the report.
Though public opinion is trending toward legalization, America's landscape of marijuana legislation is likely to remain murky for years to come, with police jailing residents of some states who would be free to go about their business in others.
Perhaps the best way to end this, according to the recommendations of the report, is to decriminalize the personal use of all drugs as well as possession of drugs, in favor of treatment and rehabilitation when necessary.
At the very least, the report recommends making sure drug possession of any kind is not a felony.
Other policies need to go as well, according to the report. Police departments often measure success by number of arrests, providing them with a reason to put folks in handcuffs for simple drug possession.
Until such incentives are eliminated, drug arrests are likely to remain high.
Topics Cannabis
Colin is Mashable's US & World Reporter. He previously interned at Foreign Policy magazine and The American Prospect. Colin is a graduate from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. When he's not at Mashable, you can most likely find him eating or playing some kind of sport.
