By Andrew Gardewine, Contributive Writer
The United States houses over 20% of the world's prisoners. According to the FBI, there are an estimated 1,488,707 people imprisoned for drug related crimes annually. And of those arrests, 52% are marijuana related. Of this 750,000, 38% are based on possession of small amounts of marijuana (usually under an ounce) rather than the actual usage or trafficking. In contrast, there were an estimated 1,089,171 arrests for driving under the influence of alcohol, something that is demonstrably dangerous, yet the possession and consumption of alcohol is not illegal.
In 2015 over 10,000 people died due to people driving over the legal limit of alcohol consumption and there were approximately 88,000 deaths caused by alcohol in general. On the other hand, ther...