Fight racial disparity by legalizing marijuana: Guest opinion (Oregon lunicy)

Oregonian ^ | 08/16/2014 | Sandeep Kumar

[aimhigh]

Racial disparities tend to exist where one doesn't expect them. Situations provoke them to appear, and — if we're willing — we take notice and act. For decades, social justice advocates have referenced the racial disparity in citations and arrests for marijuana.

liberal blah, blah . .

Ending the war on marijuana won't end racial disparity in Oregon, but it would diminish it. Criminalizing marijuana allows racial inequality to fester. We can't reduce racial disparity where we don't know it exists, nor when we lack practical solutions. In the case of marijuana arrests, we have both. Isn't it responsible and necessary to adjust?

[rstrahan]

Having worked as an investigator in a Prosecutor’s office, the War on Drugs is for two things: First to show that the cops and prosecutors are ‘tough on crime’ and generate more salaries, higher vudgets for both.

Second (and more importantly to the politicians) the money resulting from seizures of property in drug busts. Cop pulls over a Caddy, the cop finds a tiny residue of a doobie in the ash tray, the Caddy is seized and all cash on the occupants as ‘drug-related’.

It is all about the money.

[HiTech RedNeck]

I continue to say, with biblical basis, that it was a mistake to have shifted blame and responsibility to soulless entities. That is how we got the concept of demon rum, etc. Theologically it is valid to identify the existence and work of demons, but they are not physical objects. They are spirits who urge the misuse of the creation.

Unclear theology obscured the whole idea that the creation is a good creation, and torpedoed opportunities for God’s grace to operate. God will love and bless everyone who is willing to receive the love and the blessing. And that means not putting artificial limits upon Him. A healing art was distorted into a destructive art, because it was presumed that a chemical is capable alone of moral action. It is not. Water can slake a deadly thirst, or it can drown. Putting respect for God where it belonged would have gone much further than Prohibition, either historical or present, could have, in resisting the abuse of drugs.