Meanwhile, thousands of street-level salesmen and users have been cuffed and hauled to the station:
Chicago police last year made about 35,000 arrests for drug offenses. That’s down almost 9 percent from 2011 and the lowest total since 1992, when police made about 34,400 drug arrests. But it’s still far and away the leading category of arrest in Chicago.
* The majority of drug busts were for misdemeanor marijuana possession. While the number of these arrests dropped 12 percent from 2011 to 2012, there were still nearly 18,000 of them, even though a new city ordinance gave police the option of issuing tickets instead. Police made about 2,000 more arrests for dealing or possessing larger amounts of pot. By comparison, police only wrote 380 tickets for marijuana possession.
* Most of the drug arrests occurred in just ten of the city’s 50 wards; all of the top-hit wards are African-American. In fact, the top 17 wards for drug arrests are all predominantly black.