35-year-old gets life for pot

[dooley_womack1]

Oooops...

 

[Boom_70]

Is there anything more hilariously hypocritical than lock-em-up Republicans who also claim to be Tea Baggers? You just wish their heads would explode.

In answer to your question - yes. Liberals holding on to the notion that Obama is still on higher moral ground than President Bush.

 

[Det. Jimmy McNulty]

Is there anything more hilariously hypocritical than lock-em-up Republicans who also claim to be Tea Baggers? You just wish their heads would explode.

In answer to your question - yes. Liberals holding on to the notion that Obama is still on higher moral ground than President Bush.

How you inferred that from my take is awful to hilarious at best. Why don't you unbunch your panties and come back when you get a clue?

 

[JayFarrar]

Hilariously hypocritical you say? Let me introduce you to John Yoo.

Anyway, serious waste of state resources to send someone to prison for life for marijuana possession. Even if it was multiple offenses.

 

[Small Town Guy]

Just finished Okrent's superb "Last Call." The parallels to the ludicrous nature of the drug war bludgeon the reader over the head, even though Okrent doesn't even specifically mention our current world. I don't know how anyone can have read any history of Prohibition and think it's still a groovy idea to criminalize pot (you can include all drugs if you want, but marijuana especially is so ridiculous). It's really one of the more bizarre and ludicrous things in the world today.

 

[YankeeFan]

They arrested him after finding about two pounds of marijuana in the house. He deserved to go away for a while.

How do you look at yourself in the mirror in the morning? Seriously.

How does the guy who just got back from Afghanistan where he flew helicopters into dangerous places to rescue injured servicemen, and even civilians, look at himself in the mirror every morning?

Yeah, I'll never know.

 

[jr/shotglass]

Yeah, this is about that. Try again, champ.

 

[JC]

Can someone pleas explain to me the difference between alcohol and a plant, I would really love to know which causes more damage. So archaic it's unbelievable.

 

[Smallpotatoes]

Quit breaking the law, asshole.

This is generally my reaction to these kinds of stories, but I HATE pot-related incarceration. It drives me bat-shirt crazy. This guy goes to jail for life, but the guy who was arrested for six DWIs in my area is walking around free.

Which is better than the guy with six DWIs driving around free.

 

[britwrit]

Can someone pleas explain to me the difference between alcohol and a plant, I would really love to know which causes more damage. So archaic it's unbelievable.

It's pretty easy to grow yourself, no? So there's no money to be made off it by big pharma.

 

[wicked]

Or the alcohol industry.

 

[Point of Order]

Can someone pleas explain to me the difference between alcohol and a plant, I would really love to know which causes more damage. So archaic it's unbelievable.

Could it be race politics?

http://www.drugwarrant.com/articles/why-is-marijuana-illegal/

n the early 1900s, the western states developed significant tensions regarding the influx of Mexican-Americans. The revolution in Mexico in 1910 spilled over the border, with General Pershing's army clashing with bandit Pancho Villa. Later in that decade, bad feelings developed between the small farmer and the large farms that used cheaper Mexican labor. Then, the depression came and increased tensions, as jobs and welfare resources became scarce.

One of the "differences" seized upon during this time was the fact that many Mexicans smoked marijuana and had brought the plant with them, and it was through this that California apparently passed the first state marijuana law, outlawing "preparations of hemp, or loco weed."

However, one of the first state laws outlawing marijuana may have been influenced, not just by Mexicans using the drug, but, oddly enough, because of Mormons using it. Mormons who traveled to Mexico in 1910 came back to Salt Lake City with marijuana. The church's reaction to this may have contributed to the state's marijuana law. (Note: the source for this speculation is from articles by Charles Whitebread, Professor of Law at USC Law School in a paper for the Virginia Law Review, and a speech to the California Judges Association (sourced below). Mormon blogger Ardis Parshall disputes this.)

Other states quickly followed suit with marijuana prohibition laws, including Wyoming (1915), Texas (1919), Iowa (1923), Nevada (1923), Oregon (1923), Washington (1923), Arkansas (1923), and Nebraska (1927). These laws tended to be specifically targeted against the Mexican-American population.

When Montana outlawed marijuana in 1927, the Butte Montana Standard reported a legislator's comment: "When some beet field peon takes a few traces of this stuff… he thinks he has just been elected president of Mexico, so he starts out to execute all his political enemies." In Texas, a senator said on the floor of the Senate: "All Mexicans are crazy, and this stuff [marijuana] is what makes them crazy."

Jazz and Assassins

In the eastern states, the "problem" was attributed to a combination of Latin Americans and black jazz musicians. Marijuana and jazz traveled from New Orleans to Chicago, and then to Harlem, where marijuana became an indispensable part of the music scene, even entering the language of the black hits of the time (Louis Armstrong's "Muggles", Cab Calloway's "That Funny Reefer Man", Fats Waller's "Viper's Drag").

Again, racism was part of the charge against marijuana, as newspapers in 1934 editorialized: "Marihuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men's shadows and look at a white woman twice."

Two other fear-tactic rumors started to spread: one, that Mexicans, Blacks and other foreigners were snaring white children with marijuana; and two, the story of the "assassins." Early stories of Marco Polo had told of "hasheesh-eaters" or hashashin, from which derived the term "assassin." In the original stories, these professional killers were given large doses of hashish and brought to the ruler's garden (to give them a glimpse of the paradise that awaited them upon successful completion of their mission). Then, after the effects of the drug disappeared, the assassin would fulfill his ruler's wishes with cool, calculating loyalty.

By the 1930s, the story had changed. Dr. A. E. Fossier wrote in the 1931 New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal: "Under the influence of hashish those fanatics would madly rush at their enemies, and ruthlessly massacre every one within their grasp." Within a very short time, marijuana started being linked to violent behavior.