There's too many jail cells right now filled with people serving mandatory minimums for drug offenses, and the result is that violent criminals being released back into the streets instead.
I'll be very interested to see the approach here, because if it's just the predictable authoritarian move towards more draconian prohibition laws and enforcement, it will have the same impotent results as have been seen over the last century or more.
Additionally, nobody who is suffering from chronic pain should have to have a sh!t quality of life just because someone else is irresponsible and stupid...
But if you decriminalize them the cartels would have nothing to do but more human and gun smuggling, and kidnappings.
“There’s too many jail cells right now filled with people serving mandatory minimums for drug offenses”
While I agree that the war on drugs has largely been a failure, I think the above statement is a red herring. The next time you see a story about some poor sap who is locked up for having a small amount of pot in his pocket, I suggest looking into his criminal background. Most likely, his ‘first’ and ‘second’ strikes will be for something more than mere possession for personal use...and likely those convictions will be on plead down charges, for a much more severe offense.
I’m sure there are exceptions, but those exceptions are rare and aren’t filling up the prisons to the point that violent offenders can’t be housed. That’s an example of two accurate statements being made...but a very inaccurate and unsubstantiated correlation being made. Sure a few people are needlessly rotting in prison due to mandatory minimums. And sure, most prisons are overcrowded. But one didn’t necessarily cause the other (I’d suspect the large illegal immigrant population in our prisons has more to do with the overcrowding).