PROHIBITION FUNDING, CANNABIS SEIZURES AND ARRESTS

In the last several decades, there has been a remarkable increase in US federal and state funding for the nation’s anti-drug efforts. The pattern of federal funding is shown in Figure 1, which shows that the annual overall federal anti-drug budget reported by the US Office of National Drug Control Policy increased by more than 600% (inflation adjusted), from approximately $1.5 billion in 1981 to over $18 billion in 2002 (the last year this budget was consistently reported). While only a portion of this budget funded programs specific to cannabis prohibition, according to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics, this funding nevertheless coincided with a greater than 150% increase in cannabis-related arrests for cannabis possession, sale or production (Figure 2) and a greater than 420% increase in cannabis-related seizures (Figure 3) between 1990 and 2006. Although annualized data are not freely available, the enforcement of cannabis prohibition in California alone is estimated to cost taxpayers anywhere between $200 million and $1.9 billion each year.22