For the third, and last, time. In response to your post #264, I stated in my post #266 that the recent rise in marijuana use was due to "lax enforcement (marijuana arrests lowest priority), the move towards decriminalization, and the recent medical marijuana laws. All of these changes are lowering the perceived risk of marijuana ...".
You took my statement and tried to counter it by choosing one area, marijuana arrests, and saying there was no correlation.
(God, this is turning into a tpaine post.)
I defined what I meant by "recent" -- the last ten years (1996 - 2006). You took that literally. Whatever. In 1996, the arrest rate was 6% of users (641/10M). In 2005, the arrest rate dropped to 5% (771/14M).
Now, you want to make a different point, be my guest. You want to go back to 1970, be my guest. I'll be happy to discuss that.
But this? This I'm done with.
1. We were discussing mj arrests and use. 2. I showed that there was indeed a positive correlation: more arrests positively correlates with more use.
Now, let's use your numbers from 1996-2004: there is still a positive correlation between more arrests and more mj use.