Here's a newsflash for ya: DON'T BREAK THE LAW!!! If they weren't breaking they law there would be no need to send them to jail. I grew up around a bunch of potheads and saw by their example that I never wanted to be involved with drugs. Instead of spending my time getting drunk and high I spent my time in the library reading. I grew up in a trailer park, and now live in a middle-class suburb. Because I was interested in video games, I learned about computers.
Poor people are held down by the chains of their own bad habits, not by rich people.
I am constantly amazed that people seem so surprised that when people break the law, they get in trouble.
Just because you don't like a law, doesn't mean you should be surprised when, like so many people before them, people get caught for breaking it.
I often wonder if I am the only person in the tech world who wouldn't mind much higher penalties for possessions of narcotics, instead of this current "illegal, but most of the time not really" business. I'd be fine with legalisation too, I just wish the law would go heavily one way or the other.
The problem isn't that we're throwing them in jail for no reason. The problem is we aren't throwing non-poor non-minorities in jail for the same reasons.
Most friends of mine regularly do drugs. Even the self made multi millionaires. None of them have been to jail. They aren't subject to the random ass searches like the poor are.
If things were different - if the millionaires were treated with the same suspect, you bet your ass these laws would change.
But they aren't. So the laws stay the same. And that's a problem.
I think the point isn't the 'non-trivial' 'got himself/herself hooked on drugs' crimes, but the basic ones for those who don't have any money (homelessness, begging, loitering, working in illegal conditions cause thats all you can get, petty theft etc.). Not every poor person is crazy hooked on drugs and committing major crimes. Most of them are just normal people who have to make difficult choices.
>..a percentage of those in poverty to be considered criminals. Specifically, the drug war.
I knew tons of people that did drugs on the streets (most of them) and none of them went to jail accept those that committed crimes while doing drugs.
Is there statistics somewhere that shows "x number of people are in jail for inhaling while minding their own business"?
The police are always around on the streets, they don't have time to arrest people for just "drugs". I am amazed this is the refrain still going around. Consider how many states have made weed legal now, those same states decriminalized weed decades ago. No jail for weed in a lot of places for a very long time.
If you want to talk about other drugs, and pretend like they don't lead to crimes, bring up the stats, I'd be curious to know.
People who break the law are criminals, period. It doesn't matter if the law is just or unjust, or whether or not you personally agree with it. The simple fact is that the majority of citizens don't want online drug dealing to be legal, so it isn't legal.
Equating drug dealers with Ghandi, MLK and the US Founding Fathers is a stretch at the least and outright offensive at worst. These people aren't making bold political statements. They're selling drugs.
If you think that drugs should be legal, convince your fellow citizens to vote to make them legal. MLK, Gandhi and the Founding Fathers did what was necessary to change laws that they felt were unjust. Criminal behavior isn't the same thing as civil disobedience, and there are no shortcuts.
> People should not break them if they don't want to be jailed.
I'm white. That means I can smoke as much herb as I want and not even dream of entering the criminal justice system unless I'm extraordinarily unlucky. Moreover, I don't give a flying fuck what some politician in Washington has to say about my diet. I don't base what I put into my body on bad laws.
But if you are black, you have a much more difficult decision to make.
> now they've evolved. Don't judge them today based on the mistakes of the past.
If drug prohibition is the "evolved" form, then we still have a long way to go. That's the point.
The problem with this is it's biased against poor people. Rich addicts can afford to only be users, but poor addicts are the ones that need to deal to support their habit. So if you jail dealers, you're disproportionately jailing poor people.
The vast majority of drug offenders in prison are drug dealers, not drug users. It's extremely rare for drug users to be imprisoned. It boggles my mind that this propaganda is kept being pushed.
Prison is pretty life destroying pretty much anyone not a danger to others would be better off outside a cell. Also poor people generally aren't poor because they smoke too much marijuana it's not even remotely addictive like that.
Given the sheer number of people in jail due to drug possession, including a drug that is now legal in CA, it's clear a good number of those people shouldn't be in jail in the first place.
BTW, I'm not talking legally, I'm talking morally, they should have never gone to jail or prison in the first place for mere possession.
Most criminals aren't particularly forward-thinking. Those that are, usually don't get caught as often, so the ones you see are those that aren't. I used to break a lot of drug laws when I was an addict (I'll leave which ones up to your imagination, for obvious reasons) -- I used to be called paranoid by those I associated with as I refused to travel with phones, changed number and phone once a month, among other things.
Unlike them, I was never caught and have no record. A lot of that is down to lucky, obviously, but the ones I know of who are still active and not in prison do similar things (burners, never have a device on them if possible, rotate burner SIMs constantly, use encrypted messaging, etc.).
Anyway, its been years, but it's a lot less stressful to be sober and law abiding!
People who are using and selling drugs are criminals like any other type of criminal.
Civil forfeiture is fucked, sure, but the rest of the consequences sound pretty fair. Break the law, you pay the price. If you rob a small bank instead of Deutsche, should you get a smaller penalty? Just because it's a small quantity of drugs doesn't mean anything, it's still the same crime.
That is the absolute wrong takeaway here. It's about being overly harshly punished for mistakes in their youths. I've heard very similar stories from public defenders that have nothing to do with drugs, but with common punishment escalations that are hard to avoid when you're poor, and people surely can't avoid being poor.
Minor fine goes unpaid because this month the electric bill is more important.
Leads to more fines.
Leads to license suspencion.
Leads to driving while license suspended.
Leads to license suspension.
Leads to driving while license suspended.
Leads to felony jail time.
Don't get me wrong, there are choices made at each stage of escalation, and often all that's needed is to show up to court, dressed in your sunday best and respectfully explain situation to the judge, and the chain can be broken, but being poor leads to a lot of suboptimal decisions that could make it difficult or impossible to deal with any of this until there is no choice, and a felony conviction often ends up as the escalation that can't be putoff any longer.
I think the conviction rates and arrest rates should be entered into evidence in this argument. Compare them with various other studies about marijuana usage and you'll find whites, blacks and Latinos use marijuana in pretty much the same rates.
And to be fair, a drug arrest if you're white is no cakewalk. You need a good lawyer and money, and even then you'll be doing a shit ton of community service.
I'd like to see more studies showing these types of arrest/convictions by income. I have a feeling being poor (and being stuck with a public defender) plays a bigger role in drug crimes. There are more poor minorities, but that's a bigger causality issue that's considerably more complex.
Poor people are held down by the chains of their own bad habits, not by rich people.
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