Could be once in the last year. What kind of police state would we have to have to catch one person smoking one joint once a year? Certainly you're not calling for that? Yet if we aren't arresting those 25 million Americans the law is BS?
Anyways, smoking pot is not illegal -- only possession, growing, and distribution. Since we're not breaking down doors doing random searches for marijuana, the 750,000 arrested each year are those who were dealing or carrying drugs in public.
We only arrest a very small fraction of people who break the speed limit, yet you wouldn't suggest that speed limits are BS. Or would you?
We only arrest a very small fraction of people who break the speed limit, yet you wouldn't suggest that speed limits are BS.
I've explained this to you before: Speed limits, stop signs and the like are intended for orderly traffic flow. Operating a motor vehicle poses a degree of risk to other drivers. Violating traffic laws is a non-consensual crime. Violating traffic laws poses a threat to other drivers -- the threat of initiating force and willful negligence toward the safety of other drivers and pedestrians. Drug possession doesn't pose a threat to anyone nor does drug dealing or private drug use. They are consensual crimes -- no threat of force or willful negligence toward the safety of other persons.
Pot laws are completely ineffective at their stated task. There isn't a high school kid in the country who couldn't get a bag of pot by the end of the week if they so chose (and just about half of them will choose before they graduate.) Enforcement is inconsistent and in many cases marginal to the point of virtual nonexistance.
An illogical, malum prohibitum law criminalizing victimless behavior which occasionally ruins someone's day but is otherwise broken without consequence by millions of Americans every day. If that isn't a BS law, what is?
That the occasional unlucky doper goes to jail for a couple weekends or loses his job doesn't make these laws serious, it just makes the system out to be capriciously cruel as well as just stupid. Laws like this are why many people don't respect any law.
We only arrest a very small fraction of people who break the speed limit, yet you wouldn't suggest that speed limits are BS. Or would you?
Speed limits are a broader topic than personal use of one soft drug. Some speed limit laws are BS, just as some drug laws are BS.