Looknig for budget cutting opportunities?

Marijuana-related arrests reached an all time high (pun intended) last year in the US at a bit over 829,000 and this despite the fact that a lot of regular users in California and other states get their pot quasi-legally via the medical marijuana system.

I do not have a good number for the expected costs in terms of police time, court time, jail time, and all the rest of a marijuana arrest, not to mention the lost earnings and reduced future earnings of people who become harder to hire due to a criminal record, but it is not small.

A lot of police are wasting time on this when they could be going after actual crimes - the sort that damage people and property - or when they could be laid off and their costs returned to the longsuffering taxpayer.

Hard to imagine how we survived in the good old days if the 1800s when pot, heroin, cocaine and all the rest were completely legal. How come conservatives don't pine for that part of the past? Where is the left on this idiocy, whose burden disproportionately falls on African-American men?