The unjust war on drugs

This is crazy, over a MILLION ppl are in jail in the U.S. for activities related to the use, possession, cultivation, transportation or sale of marijuana.
NON-violent victim-less crime!
For use of a plant that has been decriminalized by almost every state.

Why are so many in jail? One guy has been in jail for 11.5 yrs for POSSESSION of crack coc aine. 16 yrs for '___' that wasn't even their's. Murders and rapists get shorter sentences. Many are jailed with no real evidence. The police lie under oath. The police pay informers and allow them to break laws to help convict ppl.

www.nojailforpot.com...

29 Years - Drug Conspiracy

I am a prisoner because of the testimony of others. The people that testified against me are free now. None of the government witnesses stated I owned anything of value.

I received 29 years based on hearsay testimony. I sit here in misery and pray that I can have my freedom back - it is all I have ever had.

8 Years - '___' Conspiracy

I have been in prison since February 2, 1996. A lot of my life is simply gone. I was arrested in Texas for an outstanding warrant in Indiana for the sale of '___'.

I followed the tour of the Grateful Dead and was part of the Rainbow Family. I've been harassed across America - you know the ordeal: they search you, the car, ask you where the drugs are and threaten you with dope dogs. I never thought of the other end of it all - when you get sent to prison.

I have not only lost all the freedom I ever had - but lost contact with my father because he is mad at his son for selling drugs.

I didn't realize that there were people out there who are willing to stand up and say there needs to be a change. When I was in county jail there was a man who cut a woman in two with his truck. He got 4 years - will do 2. I was sentenced to 8 years.

More here:
www.november.org...

Should these over the top drug sentences be scraped?
Our laws are not for the protection of the citizens but for protection of corporations, in the case of marijuana the pharmaceutical industry IMHO.
Who else is pot a threat too?
Just like not everyone is an alcoholic the legalization of drugs, especially weed, will not turn everyone into drug crazed addicts. Stop the madness.

In my opinionany one who partakes or knowingly keeps these things should be jailed, and if their sentenced more than twice on different occassions, they should be sentenced to death.
Also if someone kills another they should be killed themselves.

[edit on 12/26/2004 by iori_komei]

Originally posted by ANOK
This is crazy, over a MILLION ppl are in jail in the U.S. for activities related to the use, possession, cultivation, transportation or sale of marijuana.
NON-violent victim-less crime!
For use of a plant that has been decriminalized by almost every state.

If there is substantiated proof that NO ONE has ever been the victim of cultivators, sellers. etc then that may be true. When I lived in California there wee MANY cultivators setting up booby traps with hand grenades and other sorts of violent, victim inducing items. And there is no way to believe that no seller/buyer/transporter has never been injured/killed during a transaction.

I followed the tour of the Grateful Dead and was part of the Rainbow Family. I've been harassed across America - you know the ordeal: they search you, the car, ask you where the drugs are and threaten you with dope dogs.

I never thought of the other end of it all - when you get sent to prison.

If that person never thought of the other end of it, he was a dumbass.

I have not only lost all the freedom I ever had - but lost contact with my father because he is mad at his son for selling drugs.

Too bad that's part of the going to prison for selling drugs deal. Prison isn't supposed to be all fun and happy.

Should these over the top drug sentences be scraped?
Our laws are not for the protection of the citizens but for protection of corporations, in the case of marijuana the pharmaceutical industry IMHO.
Who else is pot a threat too?
Just like not everyone is an alcoholic the legalization of drugs, especially weed, will not turn everyone into drug crazed addicts. Stop the madness.

The corporations would be one of the prime benefactors along with the government. It's legal now to make your own beer/wine as well as grow tobacco. How many people do it? Much easier to go to the corner store and pick up a pack of blunts. The government of course would reap all the tax income.
I speak as a former user of 30+ years, occasional redistributer, and now clean and free. As you said, not everyone will turn into drug crazed addicts....so how many is OK, or when is it too much?

While I am in no way in favor of any type of drug usage, I find it difficult to defend the arresting of people who are in the posession of personal-usage amounts of pot.

As far as other drugs, such as coc aine, crack, '___', etc., I can't defend not busting people with that, as the very manufacturing, distributing and sells of these chemicals is bad.

While I am against any drug usage, one cannot legitimately compare pot to any of the manufactured garbage.

The real reason for continued pressure is the lobby in Washington. It's not just one industry or even a couple that would lose big if Marijuana got legalized. A short list would include, textiles, sulfur, pharmaceutical, oil/natural gas, peanuts, heavy machinery, plastics, probably many more too that I'm just not thinking of.

Legalization of hemp alone would do more to help the average american, and more to injure the overall economy than probably any other single piece of legislation so far considered. It's a touchy subject for sure, but in the end, I think it would lead America into a new age of prosperity. Imagine growing hemp for use in hydrogen production plants, to power fuel cells with a byproduct of water, that could be used to hydrate the plants and provide impurity free drinking water to the public. With new techniques, warehouses in urban areas could be converted into hydroponic super-growrooms, housing tens of thousands of plants.

The potential is there, but it requires a strong lobby, and active participation by millions of Americans, which just isn't feasible given the number of USA denizens who don't leave their couch for anything except food and defecation.

Drugs do hurt a lot of people but so does the war to stop them.
I think the sentances are too harsh for some of the people who were charged with just possession.

I posted a thread about it here:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

There's a little problem with the cartoon.
Central America (Columbia, that is) is suffering the brunt of our unsatiable thirst for drugs to pacify our useless existence. Were it not the demand for the crap by us, there'd not be the suffering by them.

Just to keep things in perspective.

I think that the reactions to pot are really over the top in America.

If you look at countries like Holland where pot is legal, it's not like the wheels of soceity has stopped because everybody is stoned. In fact there are less schoolgoing teenagers smoking pot than in France where it's illigal.

Also, people smoking pot generally are not the biggest of troublemakers, due to it's sedative effects (allthough really strong pot or combenations with other drugs can really trigger psychotic reactions) .

From a practical point of view I would stop hunting pot smokers and use the freed up resources/money/prisoncells for serious crimes and to counter hard drug abuse.


[edit on 26-12-2004 by Countermeasures]

The war on drugs is a joke.
If anyone at government level was serious about it then the huge smuggling operations would have ceased by now. All they do is to pick up the little guy dealers on the street and make a few bigger discoveries to make it look like they are winning.

The amount of money generated by the drug trafficking is a good source of income for shady black ops as there is no official paper trail

The point is it's not really the big dealers who set booby traps to protect their crop that are getting big sentences. It's the USERS.
(Anyway wouldn't you protect your investment and property?)

I have been in possession of '___' on many occasion (not any more) and did not think about jail either, but if I was caught I'd have been screwed.
Was I hurting anyone? Of course not. Was I a dumb ass? Probably. But we don't # up someones life for being dumb. Otherwise half the nation would be in jail (including the bush man).
Do you really want your tax dollars spent keeping stoners in jail?
We had alcohol prohibition once and it was scrapped, other wise the jails would be full of drunks...no more ppl killed by drunk drivers hehe...The states hypocrisy is everywhere...
Alcoholism is a disease(?), why is stonerism not...lol?

(i don't believe alcoholism is a disease BTW)

And yes there are many many reasons for drugs being illegal.
WyrdeOne I agree with you completely. I would have included a lot more about hemp etc... but I wanted to keep it short.
We could go into the use of crack coc aine and heroin by the state to help control the dissenting masses. Particularly the poor and African Americans who showed they were a huge threat to the powers that be with the Black Panthers etc...If drugs were legal then they couldn't be used as a controlling tool as effectively. Of course the legal ones work quite well on the unquestioning sheeple.

Yeah, the disparity between sentences given to prescription drug abusers and illicit drug abusers. If the powers that be declare something illegal, and allow a comprable or greater danger to manifest unhindered by legislation, beware said powers that be. They do not have your best interest in mind. Of course, they maintain that smoking cigarettes and pot will give you cancer, and for a very small number of people this is true, but do they publish the effects of aptmospheric nuclear tests, or do long term studies on the effects of prescriptions before releasing to the general public, of course not.

Smokers get a bad rap, and take most of the blame for cancer, when the facts clearly show that forest fires in Canada, and radioactive dust from numerous aptmospheric nuke tests are the real culprits behind cancer in the US. Japan has twice as many smokers as the US, and 1/10th the incidence of lung cancer, why? Holland has legalized Marijuana and it has almost no violent crime, why? Like usual, few people in America, or any where else for that matter, care. We have been steadily reduced in inteligence, stripped of rights and marginalized to reduce our effectiveness. Looking at the signs of the past 30 or so years, can anyone deny we've made steady progress towards a police state?

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It�s an interesting question to ask�Why are governments so strongly against drug use?

Certainly harder drugs, addictive or intravenous drugs are a blight on society that exacts a terrible cost in ruined lives, crime, poverty, and disease.

But I think there is something more. You have to ask what the government wants from the people. (IMHO) They want you to work, consume, pay taxes, and not question authority.

Drugs that support this wage slavery arrangement, like alcohol, nicotine and caffeine are tolerated, regardless of the costs. How many crimes are committed under the influence of alcohol? How much illness is caused or made worse by cigarettes?

Drugs like marijuana do not reinforce the wage slave arrangement. The term �mind expanding� is arguably a misnomer, but any drug that is demotivating or encourages introspection and pondering of alternatives is considered dangerous. This is why they are illegal. The authorities don�t want people home sitting on a couch smoking a joint and wondering why they are caught up on a treadmill of working and consuming so that corporations can reap the profit.

Everything in our culture is a commodity. Anything free is of no use and no value to the corporations. Anything that questions the cycle of wage earning and consumption is a threat.
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Good replies guys

The government always finds a scapegoat for everything they do.
A way to shift the focus from the real culprit, so as to allow them to continue with their agenda unhindered.
Anti-cigarette campaigns they know have no real effect on the cigarette industry, but it makes it appear that all our health problems are caused by something we our selves choose to do....Smoke. The gov are experts in CYA (covering your ass) and shifting blame on the innocent.
They continue raping the earth and enslaving it's population under a cloud of cancer causing pollution. They don't care about our health, only keeping us ignorant so they can continue on their drive to wards total control and power.