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This is true CJ. The drug warriors try to perpetrate that it's a myth that people are charged with simple possession. Totally untrue. The majority of the 750K+ people arrested annually on marijuana charges are simple possession.

Big time dealers have connections and money (Vignali) and other people to turn in. So the lowest people on the chain are sacrificed so the DEA can add numbers to it's body count. The whole business is corrupt, through and through.

Here in Washington we voted to allow medical marijuana use back in '98. But because of confusion over federal regulations patients still do not have reliable, safe access to it that I know of.

I personally know someone who used pot to control constant back pain and anxiety. One day after work last summer he unwisely decided he couldn't wait until he got home, and lit a single puff as he drove home. He was stopped and siezed by local police, and held by them for several hours, incommunicado. The State Police were summoned; his car was searched by drug sniffing dogs and towed away.

The search found only marijuana, in an amount less than a gram, although the police kept hounding him and insisting that he must be on crack (his anxiety disorder caused his pulse to be extreme). Eventually, they took him to the hospital to test his blood, and left him there to find his way home.

This person is now spending FIVE YEARS in a deferred prosecution program, forking out gobs of money for mandatory "treatment", lawyers and court fees. The judge deemed that, although this person rarely drinks and alcohol was not involved in any way in his "crime", he is required to abstain from it for this five year period as well.

Now, admittedly, it was foolish of my friend not to wait until he got home before taking his medicine. But, does this punishment, in your opinion CJ, remotely fit the "crime"? Is it right that his family, for whom he is the sole breadwinner, sat for hours wondering if he had been killed, or that they now must sink deep into debt so that some moronic "treatment" facility can get rich having him pay to piss into bottles, at their demand? Is it right that he spend the next five years in untreatable chronic pain?

If my friend had gone to trial, according to his lawyer, he would have been found guilty (because he was driving while "intoxicated"), and would be experiencing similar travails with the addition of a minimum of a night in jail, thousands in fines (and additional legal fees), his driver's license revoked and possible loss of his employment.

Does any of this seem remotely proportional to the severity of my friend's "offense"?