Can You Be Busted if You and Other People Are Are Smoking Weed at a Concert

States completely differ in their approaches to marijuana: some arrest thousands of people each year, while others barely arrest anyone at all.

Some of the nigh solidly blue states — New York, Illinois, and Maryland — make the well-nigh arrests each year, along with deep-ruddy Louisiana and Mississippi, according to a compilation of federal data from Habit-Treatment.com.

Map by Addiction-Treatment.com

Even when decision-making for how many marijuana users reportedly live within a state, arrests remained high in New York, Illinois, Maryland, Louisiana, and Mississippi.

Map by Addiction-Handling.com

At present, these arrests don't ever atomic number 82 to jail and prison time. Estimates put just forty,000 people for marijuana in country and federal prisons, and many of those were involved with trafficking, not but possession.

Laxer state policies play a role sometimes, but not ever

A lower number of arrests tin in some cases reflect a state'southward more relaxed policy approach to marijuana. Alaska, for instance, decriminalized marijuana in the 1970s, and in Washington the drug was legal for medical purposes in 2012. (The drug was not fully legal in any state until the finish of 2012, when some arrest data for the year had already been collected.)

But the arrest statistics in other cases defy expectations gear up by country policy.

New York, for example, decriminalized marijuana in the 1970s, simply police in the state arrested thousands for possessing the drug in 2012. Every bit the Marijuana Policy Project explained, there is an exception in New York's decriminalization law for marijuana that'south within public view. Police force officers reportedly used that exception to arrest people, particularly minorities, past getting them to empty their pockets during searches and expose marijuana that would otherwise remain hidden.

In other words, country policy is of import, but how police enforcement treats the police can exist just as important.

Relaxed state policies tin can reflect a college population of marijuana users

The states with the well-nigh relaxed marijuana policies are often the states with the virtually marijuana users. From a sure perspective, that makes sense: marijuana users might flock to states with more relaxed laws, and a state population with more than marijuana users might be more than predisposed to let the drug.

Map past Addiction-Handling.com

These numbers for regular pot users besides explain marijuana legalization advocates' next targets for ballot and legislative efforts. As a red state, Alaska might seem similar an odd choice for a 2022 ballot initiative that would legalize marijuana. But when looking at the high amount of reported pot users in the state, Alaska appears to be a more sensible target.

From that perspective, the only real surprise is that legalization advocates aren't putting more public efforts into Montana. There, marijuana possession still carries jail and prison house time despite the country's high population of pot users. And then again, based on the abort statistics, Montana's marijuana laws aren't being enforced that much in the first place.

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Source: https://www.vox.com/2014/5/26/5751186/these-maps-show-how-likely-you-are-to-get-arrested-for-smoking-weed

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