Replies

“If the punishment is severe enough (like 60 years for heroin dealers, 50 years meth dealers, 30 years pot dealers, etc.), and NO CHANCE OF PAROLE, AND NO DEALS PRE-TRIAL, then you better believe many folks would think twice before throwing away their life in the pen for cooking up meth or dealing weed.”

You want to give people 30 years with no parole for selling a little pot? That's crazy. It's way more time than we give far worse criminals. And no deals before trial? Do you know that nationwide only about two and a half percent of all felony cases ever make it to trial? I'd say at least a quarter of our felony cases here locally are drug cases. If we were to increase the number of jury trials several fold we'd need a corresponding increase in the number of judges, courtrooms, bailiff's, court reporters, clerks, prosecutors, public defenders, etc., etc. Jury duty would become a nightmare and we'd have to call in an awful lot more jurors. It just wouldn't be possible, not without spending several times what we currently spend on law enforcement, the courts, prosecutors and public defenders, and our prisons, and taking up an awful lot more citizen time with jury duty.

And when you say no deals do you mean no more of this stuff where people that get caught go out and buy dope from someone else so they will stay out of prison? I'd kind of like to see most of that stop. In my area at least all that's how most drug dealing cases start. One person will get busted and the cops tell that person to go buy them a gram of meth or cocaine and they'll get a signature bond and a suspended sentence. They go make a taped buy from someone they don't think will hurt them, and they get off easy. These are almost always purchases of a gram or less, consequently most all drug delivery cases involve a gram or less of some powder drug or a couple of pills. The people that are getting busted aren't all big drug dealers, not by a long shot. Some of them probably really aren't even drug dealers, they're just dopers who thought they were doing a favor for a fellow doper in going to get them some dope.

“Also, STOP IT AT THE BORDERS. PERIOD.”

We can't stop this multibillion dollar trade at the borders or in this country.

“If you think this would not work better than our present system, you are just kidding yourself. “

If we were to increase prison times dramatically we probably would deter more people. There would still be drug dealers though and drugs would still be available. We'd be bankrupt, especially with this “no deals” policy, and all we'd see is a small reduction in the drug problem. We'd probably have an increase in thefts because those who sell small amounts of drugs to feed their habits would steal instead because the punishment would be far less severe if they get caught. I don't know though, people already get more prison time for selling a small amount of dope to another doper than they do for burglarizing homes and we have no shortage of people selling small amounts of drugs.

“And if you think drugs should just be legalized, you are deceived and no amount of discussion will convince you otherwise.”

I don't think all drugs should be legalized, just marijuana. It's just not worth it to continue trying to keep up the ban on that drug. It's not harmless, but it's nowhere near as bad as drugs like meth, cocaine, or heroin. It's not particularly addictive. It doesn't lead to a lot of risk taking or criminal behavior. It doesn't make people violent. A good 75% or so of all battery cases I've seen coming through the courts have involved drunks who get violent when they drink. You just don't see that with pot. A massive “war on pot” is just not warranted.

It is the backbone of the illegal drugs trade though. Mexican organized crime make most of their money from marijuana sales. By far more marijuana is consumed in this country than all other illegal drugs combined. The black market for illegal drugs is mostly a black market for marijuana, with all the marijuana users and sellers that far outnumber users and sellers of all other illegal drugs. Because it is used by so many people all over this country, the distribution networks for marijuana are bigger and reach far more people than distribution networks for other drugs. Consequently these distribution networks make perfect conduits through which organized crime who supply the marijuana can reach countless consumers with their other far more harmful drugs. If we were to take marijuana from them, not only would we deprive them of most of their income but the loss of the marijuana distribution networks and all the countless marijuana sellers who help them move their other drugs would be a severe blow to their infrastructure for their hard drugs business.

Prohibiting intoxicants for which there is a lot of demand never really works very well. We saw that with alcohol prohibition. It caused way more harm than good. It cut down on some of the drinking but as time went on even that gain was being lost as more people just started breaking the law and drinking illegally. Marijuana prohibition is causing all the same sorts of problems alcohol prohibition caused and then some. And we really have nothing good to show for it. Pot is easy to find anywhere in this country and it's cheaper than beer on a per use basis in most cases. We aren't making it such that people can't find it and they can't afford it if they can find it. We aren't really accomplishing anything good. We have among the highest marijuana use rates in the world even though we take the “war on marijuana” a lot more seriously than most countries. There are several counties where they basically allow people to smoke pot where the per capita percentage of marijuana users is lower than it is here. According to government numbers, more than half of all American adults under the age of 60 have tried marijuana. Over a 100 million Americans have tried it. We aren't stopping a darned thing.

Personally I think we do more harm than good if we were to legalize drugs like meth, cocaine and heroin though. Those drugs are far too addictive and prone to causing us all sorts of problems. Really very few people use those drugs and it appears that the lower the demand for a drug the more effective prohibition can be. Heroin is pretty much nonexistent in my area for instance. I've had more meth and cocaine cases than I can count, but only one heroin case and that was a drug mule case where a couple of guys were caught passing through on the highway with a kilo of it. Most cops here have never made a heroin arrest. Most lawyers have never had a heroin case. I'm sure we have some people in our area that would kind of like to try heroin, but odds are they won't ever see it in this area. That would change of course if we were to have it sold from a store here. Most people are smart enough not to mess with it but a few would and before long we'd have a small contingent of heroin addicts causing us lots of problems.

Other drugs like cocaine and meth are available here, but the fact that they are prohibited does make them less easy to procure. There are so many marijuana smokers from all walks of life it's no problem to get that, but if people want to mess with these other drugs they're going to have to befriend people who use them to buy super expensive product cut with who knows what sold by shifty drug addicts likely to rip them off or get them in trouble. If these drugs were available cheap at nice clean stores more people would do them and we'd have more drug addicts causing us all sorts of problems.

Prohibition does work a little better with these drugs. Like always it causes us problems but with so few users of these substances the problems aren't as great as they were with alcohol or with marijuana today. And so few even try these drugs that it wouldn't take that many more to double or triple or quadruple the number of addicts causing us all sorts of problems. More than half of all people growing up since the Seventies have tried marijuana though and it's so particularly addictive or prone to causing us lots of problems to begin with. I think most people who want to smoke it are already smoking it. If we legalized it we'd see some increase in use, but we shouldn't see that big of an increase. And if we do, oh well. The ones who smoke it all the time will be losers and an example to the rest of why you shouldn't mess with pot. That fad would wane pretty quickly. And it wouldn't be a massive burden on society either. Most potheads are able to hold down jobs, unlike people addicted to the harder stuff.

We aren't going to start putting people in prison forever for small time drug offenses. It's just not going to happen. Things were trending that way for many years, but the people are tired of it. Our prisons are packed. In my area the waiting time for a prison bed is several months after conviction and most people are allowed to remain out on special bonds until beds open up because they is no room in our jails to hold them until prison beds open up. We can't afford to keep building new prisons, and people are starting to look at how much space we are wasting on low level drug offenders. There's no room left for people who are much bigger threat to our communities.

What we are going to see in the future is exactly the opposite of what you are calling for. We're already starting to send fewer of these people to prison, and that trend will continue. And marijuana will be legalized. It is only a matter of time. Three recent polls have come out showing that 40% or more voting aged Americans are now for legalizing marijuana and regulating it similar to alcohol. Since the early Nineties that percentage has been steadily growing. Within a few more years we'll see it hit 50%, and it won't be too long after that before we see marijuana become legal. It might happen in the next decade, but my bet is it happens some time in the Twenties, probably in the early part of that decade. By then more than 60% of voters will be for legalization if the trend of the last 17 years or so holds, and by then almost all our senior law makers will be people who grew up when marijuana was popular, people statistically likely to have smoked it themselves. Shoot, according to government statistics it's already to the point that males with college degrees or graduate degrees (most of our federal lawmakers) who are in their early sixties are more likely than not to have tried marijuana. Hardly any of those in their late sixties or older have smoked it, but those people, including the politicians in that age group who tend to be the most powerful lawmakers and who tend to be the most dead set against legalization, are on their way out. The political will to continue wasting a fortune and causing all sorts of problems trying in vain to keep up the ban on marijuana is slowly but surely disappearing. It's going to be legal in ten or twenties years whether you like it or not.