Assignment #8- Thinking About Arguments

The article I chose was "The $78 Million Dollar Bag." This article is about how the city and county specifically Chicago spend $78 million every year just to arrest and jail people for possession of marijuana. Certain people like John Fritchey is considering legalizing marijuana due to the money. Marijuana arrests are made to all different kinds of people but mainly focused on African Americans. Police are locking up people for a dime bag and letting people with guns slide. There has been 23,000 arrests per year for pot by Chicago police. These arrests take up to 84,000 police work hours every single year. Larry Suffredin feels that these arrests are wasting people's money when their dollars should be used for more serious charges. All arrests are made into a criminal case which costs money. Cook county residents are paying every single year $70 million dollars to arrest people carrying marijuana. These people who are arrested usually get released after post bond. That's money going down the drain. After all the math is done the article states that $78 million is spent a year to arrest and jail "a bunch of black guys-only to throw away their case." Also added to that $10 million taxpayers spend to jail the ones who grow and sell pot. Although taxpayers want a change in the policy, certain elected officials such as Emanuel haven't discussed it. Other officials have been informed about the problem but nobody has discussed anything. There are certain ares of the county where people are getting a ticket for marijuana possession. But theses laws are confusing people and make it harder to follow.

This article was the most interesting one out of the rest. It had some information that I never thought would happen. It introduced me to the marijuana game and what's happening with the arrests with it. I somewhat agree with the article because I do feel like police are wasting their time on making arrests on little bags of marijuana when they can catch real criminals. We are wasting so much money on these stupid arrests. I also chose this one off the list because I wasn't in the mood to read the rest of the articles, the title was catchy so it was the first to catch my eyes. It has interesting view points but I feel that it lacks a counter argument. Overall it has good evidence and proves it's point.