Pubdate: Thu, 17 Feb 2005
Source: East Carolinian (NC Edu)
Copyright: 2005 The East Carolinian
Contact:  http://www.theeastcarolinian.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/774
Author: Peter Kalajian

DRUG ENFORCEMENT LAWS CRIPPLING NATIONAL PENAL SYSTEM

Marijuana should be swept under the proverbial rug

When I was seventeen years old, the long arm of the law unceremoniously
embraced me. While attending a party, I was arrested for possession of a
controlled substance (marijuana) and sentenced to probation and community
service, a sentence that was due, in large part, to my status as a minor.

I received the expected reaction of vicious punishment from my parents,
spending the next 10 Saturdays chopping wood before the sun came up and
being completely stripped of even the most basic social allowances. School,
work, home. School, work, home. That was my routine.

I was never angry at my parents for their reaction, but there was one issue
which came into focus for me about two weeks later, casting serious doubts
on my faith in the American judicial system and forcing me to ponder the
true meaning of the word "justice".

The event which cast me into the black abyss of frustration and judicial
impotence some time later would forever shape my ideas about the moral
implications of drug use and punishment, and how badly those social
boundaries need to be changed.

As is not uncommon in the halls of high schools across the nation, a fight
broke out between several students.

When it was all over, one of the boys had received serious internal injuries
from being repeatedly kicked by his assailants, and spent the next month in
a hospital bed. The two attackers were promptly arrested and escorted from
the premises by police.

As he was the son of a local attorney, the ringleader (for the purposes of
this exercise lets call him Sam) quickly disposed of his case and was
sentenced to no probation, no jail time, and less community service than I
had received.

I was dumbfounded. How could someone who had inflicted possibly
life-threatening injuries on a fellow student be given a more lenient
sentence in a court of law than someone who had simply been caught with a
small quantity of marijuana?

The ridiculousness of that situation prompted me to do some research into
the matter, so I did. What I found out was alarming.

Our national penal system is absolutely clogged with non-violent drug
offenders, most of who have been convicted of simple possession. In 2004,
the Federal Bureau of Prisons reported that 54.1 percent of all inmates were
convicted of drug-related charges.

Prisons are staggeringly overcrowded, and the United States, the land of the
free, boasts the worlds largest prison population at over two million
persons currently incarcerated, hundreds of thousands of those for simple
possession offenses or other non-violent crimes. And since marijuana is the
most popular illicit substance in American today, a large percentage of
those convictions are for the possession, or distribution, of marijuana.

There exists in American culture today a great stigma about marijuana.
Though cigarettes (the greatest single Bain on public health in American
history) and alcohol are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands
people every year, both industries are represented in Congress by powerful
lobbies, essentially guaranteeing that the two most dangerous legal
substances will continue to permeate our society, while marijuana is
demonized as the "gateway" drug which will enslave our children and fund the
proliferation of international terrorism (those are by far the funniest
commercials on television today).

It is true that most individuals who end up as crack heads or heroin addicts
begin their journey down the road of drug dependency with marijuana, but not
for the reasons that are often stated by the Office of Drug Control Policy
and the rest of the federal establishment. In fact, the statistic that is
often excluded from the propaganda about marijuana as a gateway drug is that
most people begin their saga of drug addiction not with marijuana, but with
nicotine. Unfortunately, due to the bottomless pockets of the tobacco
industry, that little tidbit is all too often left out of the arguments
about the evils of marijuana.

Unlike alcohol, which remains the only drug whose withdrawal can cause
death, marijuana has never directly killed anyone. There is no record of
someone overdosing on marijuana, and its effects are far less profound than,
say, drinking a six-pack.

And as for the argument about funding international terrorism whenever you
smoke a joint, the fact remains that for some time now the majority of the
marijuana smoked in this country is also grown in this country, and if not,
is smuggled in from Canada or Mexico - those world-renowned exporters of
state-funded terrorism.

Buying heroin might support rebel governments in Asia, or snorting cocaine
could line the pockets of narco-terrorists in South and Central America, but
the idea that a few kids smoking marijuana should bear some responsibility
for terrorism is not only irresponsible, it is simply untrue.

All in all, marijuana is one of the most benign drugs available to the
American public today.

Not physically addicting like nicotine, alcohol or opiates, marijuana, in my
opinion, should not be legalized.

Legalization would pose a great number of other questions, tax issues and so
forth - so instead, I am an advocate for decriminalization. In Canada, if
you are caught by police with a small amount of marijuana for personal use,
you receive the equivalent of a parking ticket.

Small fines, no permanent records, end of discussion. It frees up space in
the prisons for violent criminals and provides the government with a new and
constant flow of revenue.

The simple fact remains that the punishments need to fit the crimes in this
country, and no pot smoker deserves prison.

Jail does not reform anyone, only turns people into more effective
criminals.

Let's focus our attention on real problems, not continue to ruin the lives
of innocent people for the simple fact that they chose to smoke marijuana. 
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MAP posted-by: Josh