10 Facts on the Economics of Weed
8. Incarceration of nonviolent users is expensive
Putting aside the overreach of jailing otherwise law abiding citizens for the possession and peaceful use of a fairly innocuous plant, the argument has long been made that the cost of jailing these folks is out of line and should stop. Given an American population of just over 318 million, of which 18.9 million are regular users, at an average cost of over $47,000 a year in California to house an inmate, means it would cost of more than $888 billion to jail a fairly good percentage of your population. With a current American prison population of 2.4 million, we are going to need more new prisons than houses.
