– Someone was arrested for marijuana possession every 51 seconds last year, according to the Huffington Post and new stats released by the FBI Monday. In 2014, there were more than 1.5 million arrests for drug-related offenses, and 40% of those were for simple marijuana possession, Vocativ reports. That's an increase following seven years of declining arrests, according to HuffPo. “It’s hard to imagine why more people were arrested for marijuana possession when fewer people than ever believe it should be a crime," Marijuana Policy Project spokesperson Mason Tvert tells Vocativ. "Law enforcement officials should not be wasting their time and resources arresting and prosecuting adults for using marijuana." Tvert tells Vocativ police around the country solved less than 65% of murders, 40% of rapes, and 30% of property crimes and robberies last year. Over that same period, they arrested approximately 620,000 people for marijuana possession. "There’s just no good reason that so much police time and taxpayer money is spent punishing people for marijuana when so many murders, rapes, and robberies go unsolved," Tom Angell, chairman of Marijuana Majority, tells HuffPo. He says he hopes law enforcement will soon get in line with the priorities of Americans. HuffPo reports support for legalizing marijuana is at an all-time high, yet the ACLU says the government is spending $3.6 billion every year enforcing possession laws.

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Police Arrested Someone For Weed Possession Every 51 Seconds In 2014 New statistics show the U.S. war on marijuana is far from over. 
  
 Law enforcement officers made just over 700,000 arrests on marijuana-related charges in 2014, according to data released by the FBI on Monday. Of that total, 88.4 percent -- or about 619,800 arrests -- were made for marijuana possession alone, a rate of about one arrest every 51 seconds over the entire year. While the national conversation about marijuana continued to shift in 2014, with recreational weed laws fully in effect in Colorado and Washington -- and measures to legalize the plant being passed in Washington, D.C., Oregon and Alaska -- the year also saw a reversal in a seven-year trend of largely declining possession arrests. The 2014 figures mark a minor uptick from 2013, a year that saw 609,570 people booked on possession charges alone. Arrests for possession, however, have generally been trending downward since 2007, when they reached an all-time high of 775,137. 
  
 At the same time, arrests for the sale and manufacture of marijuana also continued to decrease in 2014. These arrests reached an all-time high of 103,247 in 2010, but they've since been falling, reaching a nearly 20-year low of 81,184 last year. Overall, 44.9 percent of drug arrests made in 2014 were on marijuana-related charges. Marijuana possession arrests alone made up 39.7 percent of all drug arrests and more than 5.5 percent of all arrests made over the year. More than 83 percent of total drug-related arrests were made for possession alone, with nearly 17 percent of arrests for sale and manufacturing. With public support for legalizing marijuana reaching a record high earlier this year, Tom Angell, chairman of the drug policy reform group Marijuana Majority, said the new marijuana arrest figures show law enforcement priorities aren't in line with the nation's. "It's unacceptable that police still put this many people in handcuffs for something that a growing majority of Americans think should be legal," Angell said. "A record number of states are expected to vote on legalizing marijuana next year, so we hope and expect to see these numbers significantly dropping soon." Voters in a number of states may consider legalization measures at the ballot in 2016, including Arizona, California, Massachusetts, Missouri and Nevada. Pot policy reformers have also expressed optimism that lawmakers in other states may legalize marijuana. Angell also pointed to FBI data showing that clearance rates for a number of violent crimes have been historically low in recent years. More than a third of murders went unsolved in 2014, for example. "There’s just no good reason that so much police time and taxpayer money is spent punishing people for marijuana when so many murders, rapes and robberies go unsolved," Angell said. 
  
 Nigel Duara/Associated Press Arrests for marijuana possession accounted for more than one-third of all drug arrests in 2014. ||||| The Federal Bureau of Investigations on Monday released its annual crime report for 2014 and drug-related offenses once again topped the list for the highest number of arrests in the U.S. 
  
 Of the estimated 11,205,833 arrests in the U.S. last year, 1,561,231 were for drug-related offenses, which comes out to about 14 percent of all arrests in 2014. The vast majority of the arrests were for possession, not production or distribution. 
  
 The report breaks down both the type of offense and the variety of drug for each arrest. An estimated 83 percent of the roughly 1.5 million drug arrests were for possession, while only 17 percent were for sale or production of narcotics. Despite the fact that marijuana has been decriminalized or, in some places, legalized, arrests for marijuana possession accounted for about 40 percent of all drug arrests in 2014. That breaks down to about 620,000 people arrested for simple possession this year, and 1,700 per day. 
  
 The Uniform Crime Report is one of the most accurate, annual gauges of crime and law enforcement activity available, but it’s far from perfect. The numbers are provided to the FBI by state and local law enforcement agencies, but not all agencies participate and some report incomplete statistics. In other words, there were likely far more arrests for marijuana and other drug possession than what was detailed in the report. 
  
 “These numbers refute the myth that nobody actually gets arrested for using marijuana,” said Mason Tvert, communications director for the Marijuana Policy Project. “It’s hard to imagine why more people were arrested for marijuana possession when fewer people than ever believe it should be a crime. Law enforcement officials should not be wasting their time and resources arresting and prosecuting adults for using marijuana. While law enforcement was busy making nearly three quarters of a million marijuana arrests, more than 35 percent of murders went unsolved, the clearance rate for rape was less than 40 percent, and for robbery and property crimes, it was below 30 percent.” 
  
 He added, “As long as we have these silly laws on the books, law enforcement resources will be wasted on enforcing them. It’s time for state officials to step up and end the outdated policy of marijuana prohibition.” ||||| These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. |||||