Marijuana Policy Project

The most exhaustive collection of data ever on U.S. marijuana arrests, penalties and related information finds no relationship between marijuana arrest and use rates, while penalty structures act as a price support mechanism that boosts the illegal market.

Two analysts from The Sentencing Project analyzed data on drug arrest from 1990 to 2002. During this period, U.S. marijuana arrests skyrocketed, making minor marijuana offenses the main focus in the "war on drugs."

This report presents evidence that the United States' unmatched propensity for incarceration of its citizens for drug offenses suffers from significant racial disparity against African-Americans.

This report looks at the whole spectrum of drug treatment admissions, not just young people.

Non-violent drug offenders are swelling the prison population beyond capacity, causing crowding and mixing violent predators with vulnerable prisoners unprepared to protect themselves from prison rape.

The D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program, which seeks to teach school-age children to avoid drugs, remains controversial. This study from the American Journal of Public Health combined the data from published studies of D.A.R.E.'s effectiveness, finding that the program had no effect.

The 2008 version of this annual U.S. Department of Justice report, compiled from information supplied by local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies, again unintentionally documents the failure of the government's war on marijuana.

As with other years' editions, the 2007 version of this annual U.S. Department of Justice report, compiled from information supplied by local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies, unintentionally documents the failure of the government's war on marijuana.

This annual report from the U.S. Department of Justice, compiled from information supplied by local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies, is -- albeit unintentionally -- a critique of the government's war on marijuana and its priorities in the overall war on drugs.

Officials often claim that marijuana must be banned in order to deter use, but this study from the American Journal of Public Health casts doubt upon such assumptions.

One of the rationales for spending more money on marijuana law enforcement is to decrease crime overall, thus producing a cost savings and benefiting society. However, this study suggests that the costs of focusing law enforcement on marijuana outweigh its benefits, and may even be counterproductive.

Despite the federal government spending tens of billions to combat marijuana use over the last three decades, use and perception of the drug has barely changed.

This study adds to the growing evidence that White House anti-marijuana ads don't work and may even backfire.

Those government-funded anti-drug ads are supposed to reduce teen drug use, but they could be making the problem worse.

While governments, in this case the UK, use harm-based assessments of pharmaceuticals, illicit drugs seem to be classified arbitrarily.

Government officials regularly point to increasing numbers of teens in treatment for marijuana abuse or dependence as alarming evidence of marijuana's dangers. What they generally don't say -- but this U.S. Department of Health and Human Services report makes clear -- is that this growth has been fueled almost entirely by arrests.

The authors of this editorial make a case for better evaluation of the efficacy and possible damaging effects of anti-drug advertising.

Implications of U.S. Supreme Court 2005 Medical Marijuana Ruling

Marijuana myths and facts from the Marijuana Policy Project