President Joe Biden’s pardon of pot possessors appears to scrub federal convictions from 6,577 citizens’ records. The U.S. Sentencing Commission’s tally supports the argument that marijuana laws contribute to disproportionate punishment of non-white Americans (and, if you want to go there, men):
Only 46 of those pardoned citizens were convicted in federal court in South Dakota over the last 30 years. But that’s more convictions than in any adjoining state except for Wyoming, which had 116. Minnesota had the fewest, with 3, followed by Nebraska with 5, Iowa with 19, and Montana and North Dakota with 21 each.
South Dakota’s federal marijuana possession conviction rate proportional to current population was the ninth-highest in the country, with 5.14 convictions per 100,000 people. The national rate was half that, 2.57 per 100K pop. North Dakota was just a little above that national rate; Alabama was just a little below:
| State/Territory | Convictions | population | conv/ 100Kpop |
| Virgin Islands | 19 | 87,146 | 21.80 |
| Wyoming | 116 | 578,803 | 20.04 |
| Arizona | 1,451 | 7,276,316 | 19.94 |
| Virginia | 872 | 8,642,274 | 10.09 |
| New Mexico | 180 | 2,115,877 | 8.51 |
| District of Columbia | 39 | 670,050 | 5.82 |
| Oklahoma | 214 | 3,986,639 | 5.37 |
| Utah | 177 | 3,337,975 | 5.30 |
| South Dakota | 46 | 895,376 | 5.14 |
| Kentucky | 222 | 4,509,394 | 4.92 |
| North Mariana Islands | 2 | 47,329 | 4.23 |
| New Jersey | 378 | Original Author Link click here to read complete story..  Related Posts ... |
