Getting tougher on drugs has been the mantra of political hacks on both the left and right for 40 years. If they can’t solve any real issues, they always had the drug war to fall back on. Now the public is waking up to the fact that the drug war in general and marijuana prohibition in particular is based on lies, exaggeration and junk science. Legislators will figure out very quickly that standing with the prohibitionists is going to cost them elections.
Nice velocity po-po. Keep sucking
Arresting people for pot is the way police departments cultivate and harvest that vast field of funding.
So that’s 10 every 420 seconds?
Just when I think I’ve heard every permutation of 420 joke there is…
You’ve got to love viewpoints like this as well:
Good to see that the War on Drugs is keeping us all safe…
I’m also in favor of legalization, but come on - it IS still illegal. Do you want the police to interpret the law as they see fit?
If you want the police to stop arresting people for pot, then legalize it. Until then, don’t hold it against the cops.
Increasingly, the law is an excuse for pigs to bully people. It’s no longer about protecting people; a pig today is in a career environment where the goal is to make arrests, and they brutalize people as necessary to accomplish that.
“Pigs” who use the law to oppress have existed for a bit longer than the 1970s.
You have a point, but within the scope of what is illegal the police have a choice generally as to what they make a priority. Jaywalking is also against the law. Throwing resources into marijuana sting operations and buy/bust arrests is choosing to prioritize this over other crime, because man hours and budgets are a zero sum game.
While strictly true, it’s also not the whole point. Most laws on the books are almost never enforced, and even then only selectively. For example, violating the terms of service of any software, website, or ISP you use is technically a felony according to some U.S. courts http://boingboing.net/2013/01/16/aarons-law-introduced-w.html
Moreover, in polls somewhere between a quarter and a half of U.S. adults have used pot - what do you think the unemployment and incarceration rates would be if drug laws were actually enforced?
So, the police already have wide discretion. It’s a necessity, because the people who write the laws seem to have little interest in writing better ones. The only real question is how the police use that discretion, where they put their (again, of necessity) limited funding.
Rarely do you see every BS anti-weed talking point in a single, evidence-free op-ed.
::golfclap::
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