The American Civil Liberties Union is calling for the legalization of marijuana in response to the massive amount of resources and taxpayer dollars spent to curb the drug.

In a new study released Tuesday, the ACLU found that law enforcement was using billions in taxpayer money to combat marijuana. In 2010 alone, the report — which was based on data from the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program and the U.S. Census — said, "States spent a combined total of over $3.6 billion enforcing marijuana possession laws."

The enforcement of marijuana laws resulted in 8.2 million arrests between 2001 and 2010. Of those arrests, 88 percent were for the possession of marijuana. Additionally, the report found that marijuana arrests made up 50 percent of all drug arrests in the U.S. in the same time period.

As a result, the ACLU has come out in support of the legalization of marijuana through regulations, taxation and licensing. However, the ACLU said it would support punishing marijuana possession only with civil penalties.

"The aggressive policing of marijuana is time-consuming, costly, racially biased and doesn't work," Ezekiel Edwards, director of the ACLU Criminal Law Reform Project, said in a prepared statement.

Edwards said the arrests for marijuana possession have a "detrimental impact" on the individuals involved and on the communities. "When people are arrested for possessing even tiny amounts of marijuana, they can be disqualified from public housing or student financial aid, lose or find it more difficult to obtain employment, lose custody of their children, or be deported."

In 2010, a person was arrested for marijuana-related charges every 41 seconds, according to the study. Of those arrests, black people were arrested at a higher rate than white people, even though marijuana use by both races is about the same. An overall increase in marijuana possession arrests from 2001 to 2010 is largely attributable to drastic increases in arrests of black people, the ACLU said.

The ACLU found marijuana arrest rates for black people were 3.73 times greater than those for white people nationally in 2010. In some counties, the arrest rate was 10 to 30 times greater for blacks.

When it comes to marijuana use, about 14 percent of black people and 12 percent of white people reported in 2010 that they had used the drug during the previous year, according to data that the ACLU obtained from the National Drug Health Survey, a Health and Human Services publication. Among younger people ages 18-25, use was greater among whites.

"The war on marijuana has disproportionately been a war on people of color," Edwards said. "State and local government have aggressively enforced marijuana laws selectively against Black people and communities, needlessly ensnaring hundreds of thousands of people in the criminal justice system at tremendous human and financial cost."

Police simply operate from the standpoint that "the use of marijuana is a crime," said Jim Pasco, executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police.

"We will try to educate our membership, to the extent the statistics are valid, to be aware (that) people other than blacks are smoking marijuana and to arrest them too," said Pasco, who had not yet seen the ACLU report.

Arthur Burnett Sr., a retired judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, said his 40 years on the bench showed him that police concentrate their numbers in black communities. It's easier to catch people with marijuana in communities where there are "open-air" drug markets, rather than looking in homes, basements or country clubs, said Burnett. He is the CEO of the National African American Drug Policy Coalition based in Washington.

Burnett said some black defendants, distrustful of authorities, may lash out, use profanities or be rebellious — behavior that makes it more likely that an officer will make an arrest. Burnett said his coalition supports forming a commission to look at scientific evidence on the effect of marijuana use and "overcriminalization" of it.

The commission would determine whether to treat marijuana like tobacco, in which people are warned about consequences of its use. It would also examine the harshness of penalties for using marijuana.

Edwards said the legalization of marijuana could be used to help states facing "budget shortfalls." The "taxing and regulating would allow them to save millions of dollars currently spent on enforcement while raising millions more in revenue — money that can be invested in community and public health programs, including drug treatment."

The issue of legalizing marijuana has been brought up before the Utah Legislature, but few lawmakers see it as a viable solution for the future. In 2011, then-Sen. Dan Liljenquist, R-Bountiful, said legalizing marijuana would send "absolutely the wrong message" to young people.