"They confiscate our money through taxation and then dole it out to our local governments ..."Yes they do. Federal highway funds are another great source of bribe money.
"I'm shocked to hear that any place would have a 90% dismissal rate ..."
My guess is that the marijuana charge was brought in conjunction with the main charge -- then they dismissed the marijuana charge, keeping the other.
I understand your point. My only point was that people are going to continue to make the claim that "the laws aren't working, so change the laws" when they should be saying, "the laws aren't working, so let's start enforcing them and punishing the offenders".
Don't blame the laws. It's like people say the death penalty doesn't deter murder. I bet if we executed those 15,000 murderers each year it would have an effect. (What do we execute? 10?)
"My guess is that the marijuana charge was brought in conjunction with the main charge -- then they dismissed the marijuana charge, keeping the other."
If that were the case, it wouldn't make any sense to just ticket marijuana smokers, would it? If the police are going to have to show up in court anyway most of the time, why would anyone consider only ticketing these people? The idea is free up police officers' time and reduce the burden on the courts. If there are other criminal charges and there is going to have to be a hearing anyway, it's no big deal to take care of the marijuana charge along with the other charge or charges pending before the court. Where the new policy would help is where marijuana possession is the only charge or where any other "charges" are things like traffic violations where people are ticketed, but not required to go to court unless they want to fight the ticket. In most of the simple marijuana possession cases our office gets there wouldn't be a need for a hearing but for the marijuana charge (and the paraphernalia charge if they have papers or a pipe when they are caught).