An interesting exercise in futility
For those that believe the War on (Some) Drugs is justifiable, no citing of evidence is acceptable "enough", and no amount of semantic contortion is too great to justify an endless unwinnable war; Constitutional logic resembles a pretzel in this area.
For those that understand that Prohibition didn't end, it just switched drugs and kept going, the request to pass the salt grows tiresome ;-)
But, what the heck: it only took 2 minutes to find some numbers, from 1997, from the U. S. Department of Justice's own website
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/satsfp97.htm (since any anti-Wo(S)D site's stats would be automatically discounted). For some reason, only the numbers from 1997 are available .
Look at the spreadsheet SATS9701.WKS and add up the "possession" columns for state and federal prisoners. The total is 102,467 prisoners in state and federal prisons in 1997 for drug posession alone, equating to 9.03% of all prisoners (just under one in ten, but remember that drug-related arrests have reportedly risen since 1997 and that many 'trafficking' charges are simply posession charges with greater quantities attached).
Caveat: the DOJ data here does not distinguish one drug from another, but usage and arrest statistics provide strong circumstantial evidence that the vast majority were for simple cannabis posession [the most popular illegal drug by far]
One wonders at the point of a week-long "discussion" (and I use the term loosely) while waiting for someone else to do the legwork (figuratively). I suspect that a thread spawned by the related question "where in the Constitution does it give the fedgov authority over plants and/or medications?" would be equally long and pointless. [Hint: the much-abused Commerce Clause is
not an enumerated power.]
That aside, a quick browse through some of the other data available at the DOJ paints an interesting picture. Note, for example, that 62.57% of
federal prisoners are incarcerated for "drug offenses", while this number is only 20.66% of
state prisoners.
I guess we should be glad that the state police have better things to do... this also might explain why many federal LEOs are still so adamant about prohibition. Drug posession is the "low-hanging fruit" of federal law enforcement.
Personally, I'd rather use the
$17 billion dollars per year spent on the Wo(S)D on something more Constitutional - like national defense.