Pubdate: Tue, 13 May 2014
Source: Hernando Today (FL)
Copyright: 2014 Media General Inc
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/KiAu8PCv
Website: http://www.hernandotoday.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3406
Author: Dennis Purdy

OF COURSE LAW ENFORCEMENT WANTS TO KEEP MARIJUANA ILLEGAL

In 2010 there were 853,838 marijuana-related arrests in the U.S., over
half of the 1.5 million drug arrests in this country. Every arrestee
was at that moment barred from federal and state financial aid for
college. And without that college education, the only way to achieve
societal economic success in the future will be selling drugs. And
each of those new generation of drug pushers will need to develop
their own market for their product. And thus the war on drugs grows,
destroying ever more lives.

For the law enforcement involved, it means more drug arrests,
requiring more police officers, more employment opportunities. It
means more confiscations of houses, cars, boats, planes, cash, all to
be used for the benefit of law enforcement, making the drug war highly
profitable for law enforcement agencies, like the Hernando County
Sheriff's Office.

It is little wonder that Sheriff Nienhuis opposes the legalization of
“medical marijuana.” It provides his department with
cars, and boats, and houses. The cash is used to buy fast cars with
fancy paint jobs for his resource officers to drive.

When Nienhuis refers to marijuana as a gateway drug, he doesn't mean
gateway to harder drugs as much as a gateway into the inescapable
criminal justice system, a world of attorneys that make a living
prosecuting and defending marijuana users, judges that make a living
sending marijuana users to jail, probation and parole officers who
make their living forcing adult human beings to behave like children
needing their diapers changed. It's a world of jails and prisons paid
for by taxpayers oblivious to a criminal justice system run for profit
at taxpayer's expense, and of slave prison labor.

In 2010, 40 states reported that their prisons cost a combined $39
billion, or approximately $17,300 per prisoner per year. Florida
prisons cost the taxpayer $2.5 billion or nearly $21,000 per prisoner
that year. But the cost in dollars doesn't come close to the costs of
over 100,000 Floridian lives wasting away in a system that has lost
its way, no longer a correction system, but a system of revenge, most
for crimes for which the prisoner is the only victim. I didn't see
Sheriff Nienhuis talk about those costs.

The physiological effect of marijuana relaxes the human nervous system
and makes it more sensitive to stimulation. Unlike alcohol used to
numb, and kill inhibitions, pot is popular as an aphrodisiac resulting
in love, not fighting. By itself, it is basically harmless with no
documented physically addictive qualities. It is just about as
addictive as sex. But in the hands of a pusher, it can be used to
introduce its users to crystal meth, heroine, and other very harmful
drugs, all the more reason to keep it from the pushers by making it
legal.

Should it be that our own criminal justice system is the worst
possible result of smoking marijuana? Should our criminal justice
system be forcing our young people into selling drugs rather than
going to college? The criminal justice system is supposed to be the
necessary downside to the rule of law, not an agent of victimization
it has become. Law enforcement was designed to protect and serve the
public. But today, most citizen are afraid of police to shoot first,
ask questions later, use tasers rather than explain their arbitrary
behavior, etc. Law Enforcement, including the Nienhuis Hillsborough
County Sheriff's Office, has become the bane of the society's
existence, corrupted by drug money, and drug confiscations.

It is really time to correct the mistakes that started with the
criminalization of a weed and ended when we started allowing law
enforcement to profit from their work. We not only need to
decriminalize marijuana, but end all forms of government confiscation.
The sheriffs are correct that the legalization of medical marijuana is
just the first step, a necessary step toward putting law enforcement
and the Criminal Justice System back in the Pandora's Box.
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MAP posted-by: Matt