Given lesser sentences for violent crime than for non-violent drug crime, is the “war on drugs” reasonable, or is it a witch hunt?

The government defense of the justice system concerning marijuana, discussed on the previous page of this article, bears scrutiny in light of the following 1997 Frontline interview of author-researcher, Eric Schlosser:

INTERVIEWER

I’ve been told that the percentage of marijuana in prison is a very small percentage of the total number of people in prison for other drug offenses.

ERIC SCHLOSSER

It’s a pretty large number, in the sense that, certainly, in the federal system, about one out of every six federal inmates is in federal prison for marijuana. That’s a very large number. There are more people now in federal prison for marijuana offenses than for violent offenses. Out of the 1.1 million people in American prisons, the marijuana offenders are not the majority. But there are a lot of them. And certainly, at a time when there’s a shortage of prison space and when murderers are serving on average about six years in prison, it seems absurd to have non-violent marijuana offenders locked up in those large numbers.

INTERVIEWER

What kind of marijuana offenders are we talking about?

ERIC SCHLOSSER

Most of them are marijuana growers and marijuana dealers, although there are instances of people being put away for remarkably small amounts of marijuana. I’ve come across more than one case of people getting life without parole for a joint or for less than a joint. They tend to be habitual offenders and that’s their third strike, but that’s still a very severe punishment for possessing a joint.

When I started looking into the war on marijuana, I was struck by how similar it was in a lot of its internal dynamics to the McCarthy era witchhunts, which I had studied in college. And the deep unreason to it and the hysteria surrounding it seemed very similar. And what concerned me most was how it seemed like another scapegoating. This country traditionally has gone thorough periods of intolerance where we look for scapegoats blame scapegoats and avoid dealing with our real problems.

And the war on marijuana seemed like a classic example of that national tendency.

Source: Eric Schlosser Interview by Frontline, 1997

For an example of how current drug war policy has exceeded the bounds of reason, in criminalizing medical marijuana use, please visit the next page.