Can individual citizens buy the stuff?
All bad laws (and throw RICO into the pile).
I attribute a lot of our insane drug laws to hysterical parents. They’re worried that their children are using drugs and are willing to go to great lengths to protect them. They simultaneously want a system that will nurture their child with no legal consequences if he or she is caught with drugs while also wanting a system that will get medieval of the ass of whoever sold them the drugs or was using drugs around them - a system that puts their child in the Betty Ford Center for thirty days and puts everyone else in Attica for thirty years.
There’s nothing wrong with that. Drugs are hideous, and I’ve seen more perfectly good and happy people than you likely think utterly ruined (and in some cases dead) because of drug addiction.
Further, three strikes laws and mandatory sentencing was a reaction to the soft on crime attitudes of predominately liberal Supreme Courts and lower courts sentencing practices and parole practices that ultimately resulted in an average of only fourteen years served on first degree murder convictions. And we still have a revolving door prison system today in spite of mandatory sentencing guidelines, with convicts with multiple felonies on their record and multiple terms in prison walking the streets and committing more crimes while still in their late twenties and early thirties. This is such a common pratice, and has been for so long, that people have come to accept that as just the way it is. Thus, IMO there should be a lot more people in prison than there already are, because they never served anywhere near the time they were sentenced to.
There are tons of legitimate rants about the way we handle our “criminals” in this country, how our prisons have a disproportionate number of minorities compared to the normal population, how they’re overcrowded and sometimes inhumane, etc, etc. Rants about why the war on drugs was huge travesty with countless victims, and how poverty, race play into all of it. And big rants about how people with money for great defense attorneys get away with so much more.
But this rant, it isn’t all that coherent or backed up with stats, and I don’t have the energy or interest today to write one worthy of the Pit. Next time, try harder, and you might get more of the responses you’re looking for.
Pretty sure I’ve seen more people whose lives were ruined by drugs than you have.
IMO, there are lots of great arguments about how bad drugs are, but knowing how many people are sitting in prison because of marijuana makes me sick. Frankly, there are times when it occurs to me that more people could use a toke or two in their daily lives so they can chill the fuck out.
(Man, I’m coming off like druggie of the year in the Pit today, haha. And I don’t even smoke pot.)
No, although I don’t believe that’s actually illegal. Some private company (i.e. a store) would have to buy it wholesale, before an individual could buy it retail, so the stuff just isn’t available to us peons.
How many people are sitting in jail just because of smoking marijuana? You say that you know, so please tell the rest of us.
You do know this is pretty much only in your head right? I pointed this out months ago but the murder rate is pretty damn close to what it was in 1950 (though 1960 would be fifty years ago but I know what you meant). So again:
Murder rate 1950 (FBI statistics) 4.6 per 100,000
Murder rate 2009 (most recent I’ve found) 5.0 per 100,000.
If I could take you in a time machine to around 1980 you might have a point at 10.2 and when you talk about ‘hip hop culture’ I really feel that you are channelling concerns from that decade.
I know every time you read about a gang slaying or a particularly brutal murder you cluck your tongue and think of how things were so much better back in the day but that’s simply not true. 1950 wasn’t Leave it to Beaver and 2011 isn’t New Jack City. I don’t really think the people being murdered really care if the person killing them works for the Mafia or the Crips and don’t feel extra brutalized because of it. Hell if you’re ever feeling bored go read up on some of the shit that happened in 1920 with the Black Hand. Ever feel like being shotgunned in public because you were randomly selected for extortion and nobody could be bothered calling the cops because they were so corrupt and indifferent to the ghettos? So much for hip hop ruining the purity of criminals and making them more brutal.
According to 2004 numbers from the Bureau of Justice Statistics:
What were the statistics then for assaults, beatings, stabbings and shootings related to drug activity? What were the statistics then for drive-by shootings and injuries or deaths due to gang activity? What were the statistics then for break-ins of homes and businesses also related to drug and gang activity? What were the statistics then for the percentage of minority youth involved in serious and violent criminal activity…or hell, the percentage of white youth as well? And what were the statistics for drug-related deaths as a whole? And finally, how do all those statistics compare with the statistics of today?
Further, it’s been suggested that lower murder rates the last couple of decades are due mostly to improvements in medical, ambulance, and hospital technology which has allowed a much greater number of shooting and stabbing victims to survive wounds that would have been fatal in the 50’s and 60’s.
I don’t for one minute believe that there was more drug, gang, and cultural crime and violence in the 50’s than there is now, and I believe that answers to the questions posed in the opening paragraph of this post, if they could be found, would substantiate that view.
There are a number of things wrong with those statistics: The refer to crimes ‘involving marijuana’, not for just smoking it. It specifically includes growing and selling, and for all I know might mean a murderer was busted with a joint in his pocket. Also, the list of drugs involved in a crime add up to more than 100% so we do not know that someone is in prison solely for a crime that just involves marijuana.
I suspect that the number of people in prison solely for possession of marijuana is fairly small, though I would not be surprised that some localities might be more draconian. In Oregon, the jails are so overcrowded we release people who have committed assault and battery, so I would be surprised if they keep people who are non-violent marijuana users.
Why did you ask the question? You asked for a number, I found you a number from a reliable source. I’m not going to argue their findings with you.
We have already had this debate in another form in this thread though. When the justice system themselves do a study like this they don’t make the mistake of calling someone a ‘marijuana inmate’ when they are also serving time for assault and battery or robbery or they would rather have them in those statistics.
They made the choice knowing that it was illegal. No one was forcing them to smoke marijuana. They made that choice. They knew there was a risk and they got caught. How exactly is that unfair?
Our society isn’t perfect, but it’s still a pretty damn good society compared to most societies.
What’s your point? I don’t really care if I’m being killed because someone wants another hit of crack or if I happened across a bootlegging operation. I don’t care if I’m being killed in an Italian/Jewish turf war or a Crip/Blood turf war. I don’t really care if drugs are involved or not. If white people are killing me or black. Are we counting Irish/Italian/Jewish people as minorities back in 1920-1950? It’s no secret that whoever is committing the crimes is whoever happens to be on the edges of society for that time period. Seriously who gives a fuck about minority youth when you’re being shot?
Uhhh you think there was such a major breakthrough in 1980 that it not only held the murder rate steady but dropped it by over 50% even though the nation is going down the tubes? If we’re free to suggest things I’d suggest it started going down once the crack turf wars started calming down (which IMO wasn’t any worse than the prohibition wars though probably more publicly noted) and when the country started improving its economy.
It’s funny I started out with a huge post. Cut it down. Cut it down again. I really don’t want to start the thread with a whole now/then debate. I think crimes are more easily reported now and are better tracked. I think lesser crimes are reported and taken more seriously (imagine someone in 1950 being charged with aggravated assault for a simple bar fight for instance). Murder however is pretty certain to be accurate temperature gauge (minus medical advances).
All that said here you go:
Violent crime 1960 (earliest date I could find, and couldn’t find where they defined violent) 0.16%
1980 0.59%
2009 0.41%
Property (1960) 1.7%
(1980) 5.3%
(2009) 3%
Burglary (1960) 0.5%
(1980) 1.6%
(2009) 0.7%
Auto Theft (1960) 0.18%
(1980) 0.52%
(2009) 0.25%
Hardly damning. A good spike in 1980. Declining ever since. Probably not as safe as 1950. Not a hellhole either.
Those parole practices are the direct result of conservative legislators underfunding prison systems. Take some responsibility for yourself.
There are very very few people sitting in prison because of marijuana (unless they were selling it). If you discount people who were also convicted of some other crime, the amount of people in prison for marijuana possession is 0.3%.
Arguments like this are why I really wish you weren’t on my side… 
Missed edit window. I meant:
ETA: On the right, not drug laws. I support legalization.
VIOLENT crime rates may have been dropping for decades but non-violent crimes (mostly drug possession) is still going strong. Pull over a car with a bunch of teenagers and you run a decent chance of finding some pot. Now, which cars do you think get pulled over?