People who have no knowledge of risk analysis usually have an irrational over-reaction to the possibility of low-probability/high-consequence events. The fact of the matter is that these arrests for small amounts are very rare, but entirely possible.

It's faulty logic to assume that if it happened to someone somewhere, that it WILL happen to you. Maybe the people who are so fearful should learn some basic probability and statistics and then look up the odds of various misfortunes for which we all face the risk of occurrence on a random basis.

I'll bet that more people are killed by lightning every year than are arrested for purchasing small amounts by mail. Lightning kills about 200 per year in the U.S.

Drunk drivers kill almost 20,000 per year. Medication taken as prescribed or dispensed kills 100,000 per year according to an article in JAMA.

Yes, fear is contagious. But most people worry about the very unlikely misfortunes and ignore the much more common risks we face. How many people wear a helmet every time they get into a car? ... it could very well save their life and it would arguably be a cost-effective risk-reduction measure. But no, we don't want to think about that.

Risk perception is a very interesting field of study. Several of its axioms have been demonstrated right here in this thread. A good introduction can be found in the work by Viscusi.

Trampy