It's manipulation. They do the same with the aprehension numbers and the number of people seeking help.
Right now, where i'm from, the law does not make a criminal of a user like in the US, but they make it automaticaly a patient if you exceed a 10-day amount allowed for consumption.
What usually happens is, when you are caught more than once with some amount of MJ, you are directed to a psychologist to do a kind of an awareness medical appointment. And of course, since people are obliged to go, otherwise they will face criminal charges, what happens is that this number of people "searching" for help rises. What truly happens is that more people are directed to treatment instead of jail or trial.
Their argument instead of acknowledging this situation, is manipulative... since they just mention the rise in people seeking help.
The US, at the same time that it has the worst drugs policy, and one that many other countries are forced by the US to ensure as well (something that happens since the British Empire in China, or the US after WWII in Turkey for example), have great fighters in the MMJ community who have brought conscience and knowledge to a fight where there was none.
These people are not the government, the Feds keep with their narrow views, but the people, the US citizens, many of them are realizing that they are being duped.
Hopefully, these kind of news will help other americans to realize the complete nonsense that this war as reached to be justified and to justify continuing with it.
The problem is that the companies who are pushing for ilegality, are the same companies who are trying to patent seeds and map plant genomes to patent them, and they are the same ones who are behind the pharmaceutical industry in US and in Europe.