Where the fuck were you when we all said this exact same thing?
:rolleyes:
I drew the comparison because Absolute seems to have a problem with protesting a law if it’s only not directly related to preserving your own life. His/Her entire basis for deciding if a law should be acted against is how big of a hassle it seems. Riding in the back of the bus strikes me as completely mundane–even more than banning comic books or pianos, yet we celebrate its protestation as a hallmark of American freedom.
Yes, Absolute and others have embraced fascism in their hearts. They’re willing to sell their freedom for convenience, and scorn anyone who thinks differently. I can’t call it anything else.
I’ve never really understood the American governments stance on personal drug abuse to be honest, my brother in law lived in Texas (he is from Spain and had lived in Europe until he was 21) and swiftly went from harmless pot smoking yet productive member of society to criminalised loser in about a year after a string of totally ridiculous arrests: having an open beer container in public, having rolling papers about his person when his friend was busted for a couple of grams of weed and some other ludicrous charge, he had to leave the states as he was unable to get work due to his record and came back to the UK. What, I ask, was the fucking point of that? He’s basically done nothing wrong but wound up doing jail time and was unable to work for the rest of his time there. What happens to these criminals once they are released from jail when they realise they will probably never work in anything other than the most basic of jobs? I can’t even understand why the most ultra conservative people over there would want this to happen purely for economic reasons. From an outsiders point of view this seems beyond ridiculous on so many levels that it hurts to think about it.
You are misunderstanding my position. I stated multiple times that I disagreed with the pot prohibition. In every single one of my posts, in fact.
I mean, how many times do I have to say it? I think pot smoking should be legal. I’ll sign a petition, write a letter to my Congressman, whatever. Get the law overturned.
But I am not sympathetic to people who willingly choose to break the law because they want to get high, however stupid the law may be.
And like I said, I freely admit that I am making a judgement on the value of drug use.
Look, the issue here isn’t so much whether smoking pot ought to be illegal. Gateway drug, etc. etc., I think banning it is frankly silly, but you have to start somewhere.
The real question is why are recreational pot smokers being put in jail? Drunk and disorderly, meaning you a) drank too much, and b) did something stupid like little a policeman’s forehead, gets you a fine, and maybe a night in the drunk tank at worst.
Merely being in the same car as a couple grams of reefer can get you a prison term.
The real problem is the ridiculous mandatory minimum sentences for the most trivial drug crimes. I’m more likely to do time for smoking pot (should I take up the habit) than for beating my girlfriend (again, if I get into the habit). THAT is pit-worthy.
It should be noted, though, that the law is often written that if you have more than X amount, you are assume to be in possession with the intent to sell.
Also, people seem to be assuming that pot is the main reason people are in prison on drug related charges. I wouldn’t be surprised if cocaine/crack was at least as common. Anyway, we need much better statistics than I’ve seen in this thread so far. I’m pretty much against drug laws in general, though, so whether it’s pot. crack or meth is all the same to me.
I heard today that not only are 1 out of 100 American adults in prison, but 1 out of 38(?) Hispanics and 1 out of 15 blacks are in prison! That’s fucked up. Problem with justice system or cultural problems?
People don’t get to choose which laws they’re going to abide by. Anarchy would be the result.
If I’m behind the wheel and I’ve had too much to drink or if I’m illegally in possession of a firearm, I would expect to suffer the consequences should I be caught.
And why the assumption that I would only favor legal penalties for ‘leftie’ offenses?
And sometimes that amount is small enough as to be absurd. In most states, it’s 30 grams of pot. I was never a dealer, but I used to smoke a lot of weed and I can’t tell you how many times I had more than thirty grams stashed away. If you’re talking about low-quality pot, 30g can very easily amount to only $80-100 worth of the stuff.
Ever hear of someone who had $80 worth of beer in their house for their own use getting arrested for being an unlicensed liquor distributor?
It’s in the third paragraph of the article linked in the OP. Seven sentences in. It also states that one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34 are incarcerated. That number struck me as a bit absurd, and I’m wondering if they meant that one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34 will have spent time in prison and just got the statement wrong. (Still absurdly high though)
There are likely lots of socio-economic factors at work. It would be impossible to simply say that black men commit more crimes, or that police target black men more, or that black men are more likely to get prison sentences. It’s likely a mix of all three, with a half-dozen other factors also factoring into the causes for these horrific numbers.
Yes. That’s exactly what I was thinking, and maybe I should have been more explicit in that post. Someone in prison for selling may very well not have been selling at all.
If I’m behind the wheel and I’ve had too much to drink or if I’m illegally in possession of a firearm, I would expect to suffer the consequences should I be caught.
But both of those examples are much more likely to affect other people, drunk drivers kill people, people with illegal guns are probably more likely to use them for illegal purposes.
I think the criminalisation of cannabis is much more akin to homosexuality being illegal or perhaps prohibition. I think that if enough people get arrested for the ‘crime’ of having a few fatty boom batties then eventually maybe people will begin to think ‘hey, it’s costing us an awful lot of money to keep these dangerously sedate hippies in prison’ and a change in law will come about.
Let’s face it, it’s probably the only form of ‘protest’ that a load of stoners are going to be able to get behind, I can’t see them marching anywhere!
And I wouldn’t be surprised if they are only imprisoned after second or third convictions.
I knew a guy once who was cooking and distributing meth. His live-in girlfriend (also an addict) and her two small children were in the house while this was going on, and he only went to prison after his second arrest and conviction.
His girlfriend, who was as bad if not worse than he was in terms of drug use and miscreant behavior, was arrested multiple times for use and never did get sentenced to prison, though she did eventually lose her children and only got them back once she got clean.
I’m all for the legalization of most if not all drugs…and making people responsible for their actions (i.e. if you smoke, shoot up, drink or other wise incapacitate yourself and then drive it’s your ass). That said, the right way to go about doing this is to get the laws changed. Because, you know, it IS the law of the land atm. So…if you do something knowingly illegal and are stupid enough to get caught doing it then, well, you have to take responsibility for being stupid…and that means you go to jail. Got to hate that.
Sorry, my sympathy level is pretty low on this one. Also, there seems to be an assumption here that there is a large percentage of people locked up for using MJ. While I’m sure that there is a non-zero percentage locked up at any given time for simple possession of MJ, I have serious doubts it is THAT significant a number of the total prison population…and (assuming that is the ONLY charge :dubious: ) this would represent a pretty transitory number, sort of like drunk drivers.
Mo0ney should be spent in cleaning up drug users not jailing them. It just delays the problem a while.
Privatizing prisons and a growing jail population?: Not a coincidence.
My point was that if I’m in violation of the law - any law - and I get caught, I would expect to suffer the consequences. As I said, people don’t get to choose which laws they’re going to obey.
Now, if you want to consider pot smoking to be akin to the civil rights movement in terms of civil disobedience, perhaps if enough marches are held and enough people are willing to be arrested to publicize their plight, and enough public sentiment can be swung in their favor, then perhaps pot smoking can be decriminalized. Most people however, saw the basic inhumanity involved in racial inequality, and I don’t think they’re anywhere close to getting as het up over pot smoking.
The problem is that so many people act like prisons are the cause of these problems. It’s like they think we build a prison and then go out and grab random people of the street in our need to fill it. That’s like believing that if you build a new cemetary in your town, the death rate will increase in order to use up the new space.
Prisons are the very end result of the process. We just take in the people society chose to send us. We have no control over how many people go to prison or how long they stay here. That’s all determined by the courts, the police, and the laws.
And I will say this - by the time anyone ends up in prison, they’ve really screwed up their life. Nobody just happens to end up in prison. You have to either make a really big mistake or make a lot of smaller mistakes. There’s no easy fixes in prison.
So the question you should be asking is “Our prisons are full; so what’s wrong with our schools? What’s wrong with our community centers and medical clinics and churches? Why are we sending so many people to prison and what should we be doing to stop today’s children from turning into tomorrow’s prisoners?”
I’m not entirely sure I get the link. The police force isn’t privatized. The judge isn’t privatized. How does that result in more people being put into jail?