So let me get this straight.
Two men from a part of the country where medical marijuana is legal travel to a part where it isn’t legal and get arrested under the local laws. How is this different that any other case of illegally transporting something over state lines?
The two are licensed medical marijuana sellers - shouldn’t they have been aware of the legal situation surrounding their own product?
The two were apparently headed to a speaking event - why exactly did they have their medical marijuana with them on this trip?
And that pull quote!
This is an example of the irrational war on drugs at its finest - here on the lawn of our capital citizens arrested and persecuted for a plant! This is the reason we now lead the world in the imprisoned we are not the bastion of a Freedom we once were - Return freedom to America / End the drug war.
He’s quite right about the fact that we incarcerate way too many people, and that a vast majority of them are senseless charges for possession of minor amounts of marijuana, but that doesn’t mean you don’t still have to be aware of and obey the laws as they currently stand regarding marijuana until decriminalization actually takes place.
And what is that nonsense complaint about “citizens arrested and persecuted for a plant”? We have plenty of state and federal laws and regulations about transporting various plants and animals across state lines, yet he doesn’t seem to be complaining about them, oddly.
Also interesting that apparently being arrested for breaking the law now constitutes “persecution”? Will the courts that try his case be guilty of “tyranny”? If he goes to jail, is that “oppression”? Is the entire legal system “literally operated by terrorists” these days?
Wait, what’s that? He was only detained? For trying to bring a locally illegal drug through a security checkpoint? And he’s raising this huge stink about it?
Christ, what an asshole.
I totally agree. He should be happy, not complaining, about the outcome.
As to the plant comment, you get checked at the border of California when you drive back in, and asked if you’re carrying any citrus. A current quarantine has a restriction placed on unchecked imports. This is standard interstate travel behavior.
You left out the Nazis. Definitely needs more Nazis.
Actually, I think his actions are pretty classic civil disobedience. The only shortcoming is his rhetoric is stuck in middle school - but stoners are like that.
Even assuming Civil Disobedience, that’s a really weak way to engage in such a thing.
We’re not talking Rosa Parks style Civil Disobedience, here. You don’t go to an event as a guest speaker and bring your weed with you as some sort of protest - especially when you could just deliver your speech instead, and actually have an audience listen to what you have to say.
Yeppers, that plant comment is disingenuous to the core. Might as well call knife just a piece of metal. Harmless to many, true, but to some harmful.
Well in order to have civil disobedience, there has to be some disobedience. When the issue is weed, there are only a few ways to disobey. Delivering a speech is more a form of civil obedience. The guy may not be Henry David Thoreau, but he was doing it by the book.
Usually, there is an actual reason why you can’t transport one thing or another over state lines. Generally, that reason is to prevent invasive species. In the case of marijuana, I believe the reason for those laws were first passed was literally to keep negros and shifty mexicans from stealing our white women.
I imagine the reason they brought it was to get arrested and draw attention to what is probably the greatest mass injustices in America. It is a pretty boringly common tactic when fighting unjust laws. It isn’t like more words is going to fix a politician who thinks it is a-okay to ruin millions of lives in the name of police budgets, keeping private slavor labor prisons full, or whatever inane reason helps them sleep at night. Nothing but pissed and angry constituents is going to fix the problem and make these conscienceless sociopaths stop brutalizing millions of Americans. Contrasting activist getting arrested while another state legalizes without instantly imploding or having all of their white women stolen is a worthwhile statement.
No, you see, you actually don’t have to obey the laws. You can actively break them to draw attention to the injustice. This is a pretty time honored tactic that Americans (among other people) have used to fight gross civil rights violations. I struggle to think of a larger and more obvious civil rights violation taking place right now than infinitely stupid 2nd round of prohibition (which is certainly more dumb than alcohol prohibition).
Probably because those are just laws that attempt to stop invasive species, rather than the most common kludge used to beat the living shit out of vulnerable and poor people, fund police, funding private slave prisons, and fund brutal gang violence.
Can you truly not see how being arrested for breaking an unjust law is not oppression or persecution? Were people who violated Jim Crow laws just a bunch of common criminals and not brutalised and oppressed people being persecuted by the state? If it was the 60’s would you be giving us a “no shit, of course those black folks sitting in a white dinner were arrested, what is there problem?” bullshit argument?
So you are telling me that the law is so stupid and obviously not facilitating the public good that they are embarrassed to enforce it when it isn’t a black teenager getting a stop and frisked by a NYC cop? Are you suggesting that marijuana DOESN’T result in our white women being stolen by negros? If that is what you are saying you better call you senator quick!
People should scream at the top of their lungs to end prohibition. Nothing but constant shouting is going to end this over half century of brutal and unfathomable injustice. Since the inception of these laws tens, if not hundreds of millions of Americans have had their lives ruined either directly or indirectly. Hell, every American has payed the price in increased gang funding and police costs. People committing public acts of civil disobedience, as this clearly was, are heroes trying to right one the largest injustices in American history. If you can’t see the destruction of so many lives and be horrified and want to stop it NOW, you have a disturbing lack of empathy.
My point was more along the lines of “Why engage in Civil Disobedience when you can have a bigger impact engaging in accepted behavior instead?”
You could ask Thoreau or Gandhi or King the same question. I’m not saying NJ Weedman is in their league, but you seem to be saying civil disobedience is always illegitimate. From a cop’s point of view, you’re right.
Stoner 101: Federal land is a bad place to try asserting your rights.
One lesson that I think he conveyed well (despite his cluelessness) is that it often works out better if you pretend to be compliant and apologetic in the face of thugs throwing you to the ground, as long as you don’t give up any of your rights. It’s not necessary to challenge everything the officers say in order to retain your rights.
That sounds like a lot of alcoholics to me. Do you drink, Boundegar?
I sincerely doubt Gandhi would be too happy with the comparison. His offenses typically involved passage of himself as an Indian citizen through India or Transvaal (South Africa). His opposition was not against the local governments with laws enacted by the people, but against Britain, which required native and traveling populations to register within their controlled territories, and obey the laws of an occupying force.
http://www.mkgandhi.org/arrestofmahatma.htm
His closest arrest to this action would have been the Salt March. At that time, Britain - occupying India - held a monopoly on salt! The people collecting salt for trade overseas weren’t able to afford this basic, life required, staple for their own tables, and were starving from malnutrition.
He walked out to a beach where salt already existed, and picked up a piece. Others followed suit. For that transgression (picking up a piece of salt where it naturally existed), he was held from 05 May, 1930 to 26 January, 1931.
EDIT: P.S. Gandhi was arrested for simply speaking. He served two years in prison for writing three articles.
I believe you can fly with medicinal weed, but bringing it into a federal checkpoint remains a bad idea.
No, it’s really not normal to have border guards between states; most of the US doesn’t, though there are a few exceptions like the California Fruit Police and Hawaiian agricultural inspection. Most state borders just have a sign saying “Welcome to [State]” and some self-serving message by the governor, or maybe a toll booth on the freeway or bridge. And even at the California borders, I’ve never had the Fruit Police demand to inspect my car (obviously a truckload of fruit would be a different case); they just ask if I have any. The Commerce Clause in the Constitution limits a lot of that behavior (though there are exceptions for alcohol, because the 21st Amendment allowed states to still make their own rules.) (The glaring exception to border guards is the I-5 highway stop between San Diego and LA, which is designed to harass Mexicans and make sure the rest of us have our papers in order.)
However, it sounds like this event was on Federal property, and even in a state with medical marijuana or legal recreational marijuana, it would be really dumb to bring it into a Federal building since the Feds still have laws against it.
Apparently you’ve never rented a truck to move anywhere in the U.S. Rental trucks (like U-Hauls) in some states are required to go through agricultural checkpoints at state borders. Those states include Florida and Georgia, to name two. If traveling between states in a truck, you should call the Dept. of Transportation for all states you plan to travel through to make sure you won’t miss a required checkpoint. (Other states, like New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona — as well as California — have immigration checks.)
NJ Weedman is a living legend and I think He’s running for Congress, Anyway stuff like this should happen 500 times a day. eventually they will give in and give up on the War on americans.
To play advocate here, I think there is more that’s being highlighted than just the matter of knowing state law. Medical marijuana is legal in DC. It’s unclear from the original article whether the person detained had a mm license that would have been valid in DC, but either way the reason he was arrested was apparently because the event was on federal property and the check point was manned by federal agents. It’s this dichotomy that is really the issue; the federal government isn’t following the state law in which they are acting. And in a place like DC, that means literally on the sidewalk one place it’s legal, one foot in to a park it’s a felony.
If we stop thinking of marijuana as a drug and start thinking of it the way nearly half the states do, as a medicine, then the idea that a person might travel from one place where it’s legal to another place that it’s legal, and bring their medicine with them on a speaking engagement doesn’t seem so ridiculous.
The drunken, buffoonish authorities who reek of Wild Turkey every weekend strike again to keep absolutely no one safer.
We have scores of unsolved murders and murderers running free throughout this country, but these bumbling, inept, corrupt schmucks focus on medical marijuana instead. These evil, bumbling Keystone cops prioritize the inane over the dire…
Meanwhile, we’ve got people in this thread discussing how we should arrange the deck chairs on this sinking, failure of a drug war on Americans.
And, in related news…
750,000 Americans Arrested For Marijuana Every Year, While Most Murderers Walk Free
More than half of all violent crimes in the United States go unsolved. The overall clearance rate for murder cases is even lower.
National clearance rates for murder and manslaughter have fallen from close to 90 percent in the 1960s to below 65 percent in recent years. The problem isn’t confined to any particular region of the country, as the average homicide solution rate during the last two decades fell in 63 of the nation’s 100 largest departments.
Cops haven’t been overwhelmed by a surge in violent crime, either. Murder rates are at the lowest rate they’ve been since the 1960s. This widespread failure means that thousands of people a year (around 6,000 or so) are quite literally getting away with murder.
The big problem is federal laws provide perverse incentives for police departments to emphasize drug law enforcement over fighting serious crimes.
The government hands out close to $10 billion a year in grants to domestic law enforcement to assist in drug law enforcement. Once a department has received one of these grants, often times totaling in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, the money has to be justified, and the simplest route is to use the money to make arrests.
Asset forfeiture laws are also a big part of the problem … read more
Is Rosa Parks an asshole too?
This very well could have been intentional disobedience. I mean, given what the guy does, it seems unlikely that it was just naivety.
