Posted on 03/31/2016 5:48:06 AM PDT by shortstop
There is no such thing as a non-violent drug crime.
Drug dealers are killers, not victims, and it’s a shame the president of the United States doesn’t recognize that.
Yesterday, in what he said was an example of redemption and leadership, Barack Obama commuted the sentences of 61 drug dealers. In the midst of a horrific heroin epidemic, as the death rate from opiate overdose has quadrupled, the response of the president is to turn loose the profiteers and purveyors of this plague.
It is a slap in the face of every mother who has wept over the body of an overdose victim, and every police officer who has struggled to take drugs from neighborhood streets. Broad stretches of urban America are blighted by the violence and venality of the drug trade, and the president has sided with the criminals, not the victims.
He has chosen the divisive logic of racial victimization, which looks only at perpetrators, not victims. He has assailed a fictitious school-to-prison pipeline and ignored the reality of predator and prey.
And so he signed the paperwork for the release of dozens of heroin, cocaine, meth and PCP dealers – many of whom were also convicted of carrying illegal firearms. People whose stock-in-trade was the peddling of substances which unavoidably led to death and ruin, were turned loose on society.
And he boasted of it. He held it up as a moral example, as the sign of a higher understanding and sensibility.
Instead, it was the facilitation of one of the greatest evils facing America and the world.
The illegal drug trade has ravaged American cities, Mexican states and Latin American countries. It is a commerce of evil and violence from top to bottom. Every dollar is blood money, every transaction is tied to death, ever participant is responsible.
And drug dealers are the sharks that swim in home waters. They are the reign of terror that ghettoizes the American neighborhoods where families and businesses struggle to survive. Turning them loose, calling them victims, standing beside them, is pure evil.
And so is putting money in their pockets.
Those who buy illegal drugs, from pot to pills and heroin to hashish, are equal partners in evil. The simplest marijuana purchase provides the profit motive that guns down countless young black men and ravages innocent Mexican communities. Those who use pot, and other drugs, buy the guns and bullets and provide the bounty that decimate urban black America. If you buy drugs, you have blood on your hands. If you sell drugs, you have blood on your hands.
And if you release drug dealers, you have blood on your hands.
Perhaps the president’s view is shaped by his own illegal conduct. As a younger man, Barack Obama smoked marijuana, and was photographed boastfully doing so. He and friends built an identity around their illegal drug use.
When you’ve done business with drug dealers, maybe it’s easier to see them sympathetically.
But when you’ve attended the funerals and walked by the streetside memorials or heard the mothers weep, you feel contempt for drug dealers, not sympathy. Your heart goes out to the victims, not the perpetrators.
These drug dealers were mostly sentenced to 10-year terms, which is federal law and seems about right for the damage they do. But they will all get out early, contrary to the wishes of Congress and federal judges, because of the president’s seemingly race-based philosophy.
And right in the middle of a national discussion about heroin and opiates, right in the middle of a national flood tide of death, the president has stood beside the drug dealers, as their defender and friend.
Just as he once stood as their customer.
I wonder how many of the released drug dealers were white.
How about I grow my own weed at home and give it away to friends?
That’s definitely a “crime” and definitely non-violent.
Even people that are in jail for ‘minor drug crimes’ usually pleaded down much more serious crimes. The ones that do get caught for petty possession only get jailed for other reasons, like outstanding warrants, multiple arrests, etc.
...but according to rhetoric from the left, they’re could be just you or me getting caught with a joint. That’s why people have to ALWAYS question the real motives of the left.
“In the midst of a horrific heroin epidemic, as the death rate from opiate overdose has quadrupled, the response of the president is to turn loose the profiteers and purveyors of this plague.”
3 of the 61 were for heroin.
Drug dealers shouldn’t have ever existed in the first place
In a truly free society, adults should be able to buy whatever they want at the corner store and posses whatever they like. IF they actually harm someone with the things they buy, THEN they should be prosecuted for that crime.
Laws against possession/sale of various inanimate objects have led us down this rabbit hole of nanny-statism and “pre-crime”. Not to mention all the insane laws protecting people from themselves.
ENOUGH NANNYS!! One used to be able to go into town and buy a brick of heroin, dynamite and uranium without questions. One used to be able to fire machine guns and cannons as long as they didn’t harm another.
Now, it will soon be a crime to think negative thoughts about the state (or even yourself)...
Sure there were fools that got addicted or blew things up. But is this supposedly “safer” society enforced by corrupt police guns better?
Considering that recent news revealed that Nixon’s reason for starting a drug war was at least partially to nail blacks, it’s not difficult to conclude that more blacks are in jail for drugs and therefore they will be disproportionately represented in the 61.
Considering that recent news revealed that Nixon’s reason for starting a drug war was at least partially to nail blacks, it’s not difficult to conclude that more blacks are in jail for drugs and therefore they will be disproportionately represented in the 61.
Hypothetical situation:
Friends since elementary school, two people in their late-50s get together and one has a small amount of weed to trade for some bike or car parts...They work it out in the privacy of one’s home and seal the deal with a beer and a doob...
...That’s supposed to be a “violent drug crime”?
This sounds pretty close to blaming guns for crimes committed with guns. Certainly the left uses the same rationale.
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS NON-VIOLENT DRUG ENFORCEMENT.
AND THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS NON-VIOLENT ALLCAPS.
If you sell drugs, you have blood on your hands.
Have you told that to Oliver North yet?? Or has everyone forgot about the Sandinistas and the Iran-Contra affair?
I saw that. Whatever. This country is a banana republic..
You need to read https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich
When people say that I find it funny because they exclude tobacco sellers, liquor sellers or even fast food sellers (Obesity is the number 1 health problem).
Make smuggling drugs into this country a capital offense. Death penalty. That would be a good start. If smugglers knew it was a certainty.....oh yeah, also a great big reward for information leading to their arrest.
“Make smuggling drugs into this country a capital offense. Death penalty. That would be a good start. If smugglers knew it was a certainty.....oh yeah, also a great big reward for information leading to their arrest.”
IF they are successful, then creating synthetic versions of these drugs domestically would become profitable.
And enforcing what people do in their own homes between consenting adults ALWAYS creates a police state. There is no victim to report these crimes so it mandates spying on ALL of us
The War on Drugs at it’s inception did not involve the minimum mandatory sentences that people don’t like now. Congress enacted those in the crack epidemic of the 1980’s and the violence that blew up (and continues) within largely African-American communities caused leaders in those communities to demand a response and mandatory sentencing guidelines were the answer.
People should understand the history of it. The law is imperfect and it does sometimes result in non-violent offenders receiving large mandatory sentences, but the majority of those targeted by the law are predatory repeat felons who would be committing other crimes if drugs were not profitable.
In one way, many of these laws would compare to the three strikes laws implemented by many states that result in life imprisonment. Some of those seem unfair when viewed from afar and the outcry about those laws has already begun.
Very few of these lengthy sentences involve marijuana from what I have seen. The law is a hammer and it always will be be - often the law is written to make it difficult or impossible for a bleeding heart Judge to give a low sentence for an offense that representatives see as a danger to society. I have been around it long enough to see that the pendulum swings one way in one decade and another in the next and it will probably always be that way.
Executing drug dealers would greatly diminish the use of illegal drugs; they’d be much harder to get.
OK, let everyone buy their drugs of choice from whatever supplier they wish. BUT, when they've toked themselves into unemployability they are on their own. Not a single tax dollar is spent to house, feed or clothe them, or to help them stay high. But that won't be the case. Like alcoholism, what is a BEHAVIOR will be reclassified as a DISEASE and they'll get their benefits because they're sick. No thanks.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.