- FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images
- A vendor weighs buds for medical marijuana patients at Los Angeles’s first-ever cannabis farmer’s market on July 4.
“It is long past time to repeal this version of Prohibition,” the New York Times said Sunday, in an editorial calling for an end to the federal ban on marijuana. It will be even longer past time before this version of Prohibition is repealed. The NYT conceded that the present Congress “is as unlikely to take action on marijuana as it has been on other big issues.”
Pot arrests may sometimes ruin lives, as the Times said, but they do so far less often than cocaine and heroin arrests. Marijuana busts rarely lead to felony convictions; cocaine and heroin arrests often do. In Illinois, possession of fewer than 30 grams of cannabis is a misdemeanor; possession of even a trace of cocaine or heroin is a felony. Marijuana arrests even more rarely lead to prison. In Illinois, 17.5 percent of the prison population was doing time for controlled substances crimes as of June 2012. The vast majority of those offenses involved cocaine and heroin. Only 1.7 percent were serving sentences for cannabis violations.
