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        NEWS RELEASE ** NEWS RELEASE ** NEWS RELEASE ** NEWS RELEASE
                               October 7, 1997
                    Marijuana Arrests For 1996 Most Ever!
 FBI Data Confirm Clinton's Marijuana War To Be Toughest In Nation's History
        Nearly 642,000 total marijuana arrests* were made by state and local
law enforcement during 1996, according to the latest edition of the Federal
Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Uniform Crime Report.   This figure is an 80
percent increase since 1990 and pushes the total number of marijuana arrests
under the Clinton administration to approximately 2.1 million.  The 1996
yearly arrest total for marijuana violations is the highest ever recorded by
the FBI.
        Of the 642,000 arrests made for marijuana in 1996, approximately 85
percent (545,700) were for simple "possession."   The remaining 15 percent
(96,300 arrests) were for "sale/manufacture," a category that includes all
cultivation offenses -- even those where the marijuana was being grown for
personal or medical use.
        "This data confirms what The NORML Foundation has been maintaining
all along," states Executive Director Allen St. Pierre.  "Despite criticism
that this present administration is soft on drugs, the FBI data clearly
demonstrates that Clinton's war on marijuana smokers is the toughest ever
waged in our nation's history.  These new FBI statistics indicate that one
marijuana user is arrested every 49 seconds in America."
        Paul Armentano, Director of Publications for The NORML Foundation,
called the record high number of arrests ironic when compared to increasing
levels of adolescent marijuana use.  "The fact that adolescent use rates for
marijuana are rising at the same time that law enforcement is arresting
record numbers of users demonstrates that marijuana prohibition is not an
effective deterrent to marijuana consumption.  Clinton hasn't abandoned the
drug war; the drug war simply isn't working."
        St. Pierre noted that marijuana arrests constituted 43 percent of
all illicit drug arrests in 1996.  "This is clearly a waste of precious law
enforcement resources," he said.  "Marijuana prohibition costs American
taxpayers between $7.5 and $10 billion annually in enforcement alone."
        Statistics gathered from the FBI also demonstrate that ethnic
minorities are over-represented among those arrested for marijuana
offenses.  Racial breakdowns provided by the FBI concluded that nonwhites
comprise 40 percent of marijuana arrests, despite constituting only 20
percent of all marijuana users in the United States.
        Since 1970 law enforcement has arrested approximately 10.8 million
Americans on marijuana charges, the data indicated.
        For more information on marijuana arrests, please contact Allen St.
Pierre or Paul Armentano of The NORML Foundation @ (202) 483-8751.
*No arrest data for the District of Columbia, Florida, and Vermont law
enforcement agencies were available to the FBI for 1996.  Therefore, arrest
totals for these states were estimated by the FBI for inclusion in the
overall total.
                                    -END-
  MORE THAN 10 MILLION MARIJUANA ARRESTS SINCE 1965 . . . ANOTHER EVERY 49
                                  SECONDS!
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