capital punishment for marijuana possession?!

Because Heroin, Cocaine, and Meth are much safer.
We all know that.

 

Shit is so fucked up. Its like we're still in the dark ages with witch hunts and the inquisition. Same shit, but instead of witches, its stoners

Always got to have that "witch" to hunt down

 

America: Best importer of foreign goods
WORST EXPORTER OF DRUG LAWS

 

Basically I think there are two extremes for treating drugs as a society. Some countries go to one extreme others go to another. I was watching the ever-insightful Bill O'Reilly one day and he was talking about how his thesis was on drug control. He mentioned some countries have successfully curbed drug use that have the death penalty for importing drugs and major penalties for drug possession and he is correct in that statement. However, they fail to mention that it costs a price. I mean to completely control any drug use you have to be able to invade a person's life in some way. Bill O was discussing mandatory drug testing and harsher punishments. I wrote a paper on drug control and in Sweden they have very low drug usage rates but the cops have a legal right to drug test people they suspect of drug use. That is the trade-off. If we really wanted to control cannabis completely in America we could, but we would have to trade a lot of rights for it.

In fact, we already have traded a lot of rights away in pursuit of the war on drugs/terror, etc. You have more people in jail or on supervision (1 in about 32 Americans already in jail/on parole/probation) and you have higher costs for drug enforcement. Drugs grow up in price, attract organized crime, etc.

If you go to the other side of the spectrum, complete legalization, and no penalties (except smoking and driving, doing drugs in public, etc.) you will likely have increases in use. This is possible but it hasn't really occurred in Portugal which is probably the closest example in the 1st world to legalization. I did, however, read recently about increased use in Portugal in paper critical of their drug policy.

So in my opinion you basically have to form a drug policy that treats each or all drugs on a spectrum between complete legalization and complete control. If you want to completely control and stop usage you have to spend a lot of money and have strict punishments that are going to require more money and degradation of rights (increased prison population = can't treat them as well or have to buy more prisons, etc.). Currently we sit in the middle where we don't really control use because we didn't degrade of the rights and start bringing dogs into bars or drug testing everyone BUT we have drug tested most/we have increased prices/costs of prisons, etc. I believe we need to AT LEAST move down the scale towards legalization with some drugs and decrease penalties to save on cost. There may be increased social cost if drugs use does actually increase but there would be less invasion over the public and we would decrease the costs related to trying to curb drug use but not fully being able to form a policy that can truly be successful because we have a pesky Constitution that limits some of the crazy shit that police have to do if they want to stop all drug possession, importation, etc.

Sorry, this was like my last paper I ever wrote in school...

 

Yes unfortunately instead of the salem witch trials, we are now stuck in the Stoned Age where every consumer of mj is a low life criminal and deserves to die because of a plant..

 

Wow.. That's almost depressing lol, I am sure glad I live in North America and weed sentences are minimal. When anyone thinks they got it tough, think again, atleast you're not this guy.