Classic
The crime wasn’t pot per se but rather inflicting it upon unwitting victims.
I agree with jail time for the students, as it’s not like they didn’t know what they were doing. However I agree with those that think 20 years would be far too much.
They served deliberately tainted food to people. Man, that’s just not cool. We need food to live, and if you can’t trust the food you eat, what can you trust? Giving food to people you respect also has a long tradition in human history. You eat a gift of food with your coworkers and you all start feeling sick, that isn’t the sort of thing you ignore. It’s pretty much go to the hospital and hope you’re not already dead.
It has to be more than a Community Service slap on the wrist. That’s practically admitting that this sort of thing is OK. They need to do time, not 20 years, but more than a month. I’m talking a good solid month sleeping in a cell with bars, not a halfway house where they go home on the weekend. This will get a plea deal anyway, no way these kids get anything like 20 years.
I’ll weigh in fully when someone actually gets sentenced for 20 years. Given that is unlikely here, if and when I hear about the conviction and sentencing of the defendants, I might opine on my own thoughts of its appropriateness.
What if one of the people who ate one had a job that required random drug testing?
A little bit of jail time is appropriate.
Since when do we base punishments on “what if’s” ? The fact is, no one had serious medical consequences, no one crashed a vehicle, and no one failed a drug test. This is overreacting. We don’t charge bank robbers with murder just because they are carrying guns, even though “somebody coulda been killed”. If you sentence people to the maximum no matter what the actual damage is, what do you do when the defendant actually kills someone? Double Secret Maximum Sentence?
Did you read this line in the article:
Note the word “hospitalized”. This wasn’t just a prank; he poisoned 18 people. I don’t think 20 years is enough.
Nice stawman, Fear. Fact is, no one has advocated the maximum sentence. I was just pointing out another reason why it is potentially a big deal to do this to someone. Furthermore, we do increase what we consider to be the severity of the crime based on what could have happened. The maximum sentence for robbery is more if a gun is used than if a knife is used more of the time.
There are specific laws regarding the use of guns in crimes. That is not the same as “what iffing”. We do not increase sentences based on hypothetical consequences. Someone who possesses a gun during a crime does not get the same sentence as someone who shoots someone during a crime.
Poisoning the public can’t be tolerated. Should we be waiting for them to tamper with Tylenol tablets before we remove them from society for behavior modification?
Yes.
[QUOTE=Kentammy]
(a) Find a real cite. I’m not frankly inclined to trust NORML’s summaries of scientific results, especially given some familiarity with how the media distort such things. An advocacy organization is likely even worse.
(b) Find evidence that a first-time marijuana user who doesn’t know they’re on marijuana isn’t any more dangerous a driver. Habitual pot-smokers all claim to be able to drive perfectly well while high, and I’ve seen enough of them do it that I don’t doubt that, in some cases at least, it’s true. However, assuming because habitual users can drive reasonably well while under the influence that cannabis-naive people intoxicated without their knowledge can properly compensate for its effects is patently ridiculous.
Weed has different effects on different people. Some people get a completely dysphoric high - it’s not always fun. And depending how much pot they used, it’s possible to consume far more than you could via smoking it, which means that people might have been very heavily intoxicated. Being really, really high is disorienting at best, and for people who had never used it, I imagine it was at very least pretty frightening.
Potentially poisoning 18 people and scaring the shit out of them might not merit 20 years, but he sure deserves something.
So do I. I’d be majorly pissed if someone slipped me some ganja biscuits.
It’ll be interesting to see what sentence is handed down.
Give them a public whipping and be done with it. Seriously. I think public whippings should be used for a variety of situations along the lines of “you’re not a hardened criminal but you are incredibly fucking stupid, so let ten lashes be a lesson to you, idiot.”
Oooooh! “Hospitalized!” Well, that is twenty years’ of serious, then.
I mean, what with the stomach-pumping, and the activated charcoal treatments, and the plasma, and the…
Oh, wait – nobody received or required any actual medical treatment.
Don’t use a hysterical overreaction to justify a hysterical overreaction.
What the kid did is obviously irresponsible to the point of criminality, but a commeasurate sentence would be measured in months, not decades. (In addition to the separate sentence for possession, of course.)
We spend FORTY FUCKING BILLION $ A YEAR on this stupidity.
In this case- slap their wrists, give them probation, and tell them to never do it again, or you’re really going to Prison.
Hear, hear!
I second the idea of “what happens when one of these folks has a drug test for their job?”, as well as the “what if someone had been allergic?”
Hell, what’s the maximum sentence for “contaminating food”, or slipping someone roofies? That might be a better guideline.
Again, this isn’t about drugs, it’s about slipping an unknown substance to unsuspecting people. Jesus!
Yes, twenty years is far too much, but this shouldn’t be a slap on the wrist, either.
No, we don’t. We spend $40 billion a year stopping people from using drugs consensually. Most folks around here are against the so-called “War on Drugs” because we generally feel that people have the right to use drugs - at least some of them - in the privacy of their own homes. Don’t confuse that issue with this - not even the most hard-core pot activist is calling for people to be secretly administered the drug. If you think that those of us who are opposed to the drug war are opposed because we like to see kids hiding weed in food they give to their teachers, you’re mightily confused. Any loosening of drug laws should certainly not apply to people sneaking them into others’ food.
Don’t damage the reputation of people working to stop the drug war by trying to defend these kids’ actions.