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I certainly wouldn't advocate smoking dope to anyone, but sending people to jail for having an ounce or less of the stuff is absurd.

"I certainly wouldn't advocate smoking dope to anyone, but sending people to jail for having an ounce or less of the stuff is absurd."

I think it's pretty absurd to send them to jail for having any amount. It doesn't do us a bit of good. Even locking up pot dealers is pointless because the people who would have bought it from them just end up getting it from someone else. We are wasting our time and money. Pot is here to stay and we can't change that. It's not even worth it to keep trying. Pot isn't that big of a deal. It's not weapons or mass destruction, not heroin or meth. It's just a mildly harmful drug that can be a big waste of time if people smoke it all the time. It's no worse than alcohol.

I say it needs to be legalized. I'm tired of us sending all these people to prison like we do in my county. We get plenty of marijuana mules here carrying big loads they don't own themselves and send them to prison for a long time like they are major drug kingpins. If it was legal the guys hauling pot would be like the guys driving the Budweiser trucks. People working in the industry or regulating it will be tax paying law abiding citizens for the most part instead of a bunch of criminals and young people fooling around whose lives will be ruined if they are caught. Instead of wasting all this money fighting a losing battle that causes more problems than it solves the government could be raising revenues. I'm really frustrated watching this whole stupid thing unfold day in and day out in my job as public defender.

And regardless of what some people say, people do go to jail all the time for having less than an ounce of pot. Where I live they'll go to jail and have to bond out. If it is a first offense at least in my county they won't be sentenced to any additional jail time. For a second offense, even for a couple of joints, they might actually get a prison sentence. One county over from where I live the prosecutor will not ever give a suspended sentence offer on a second offense for simple possession of marijuana. It's always a prison offer. In some counties in my state everyone gets some jail time for a first offense. Then there are some counties where it's generally just a fine but the plea agreement is structured such that the conviction won't go on people's records. The laws vary considerably from state to state and the way they are enforced varies considerably from county to county, city to city, prosecutor to prosecutor, day to day. It's willy nilly the way it works out, and frustrating as hell.

I certainly wouldn't advocate smoking dope to anyone, but sending people to jail for having an ounce or less of the stuff is absurd.

If sending people to jail for under an ounce is absurd, then sending people to jail for having a truck load of it is absurd.