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By GregB (anonymous) | Posted June 15, 2009 at 22:01:45
Two points -
- I really can't see why we won't at least try legalization/decriminalization. It isn't as if we can't change our minds in a few years if we feel like it. Is the argument really that as little as two years of drug freedom would be so ruinous that there would be no chance of again being at the point we are today? Our country's population so addicted to pot and heroin that our lawmakers can't pass any "tough on crime" laws because even they can't stop nodding off long enough to vote?
- One of the worst things about the "war on drugs" is that it separates a very large segment of the population from the police force. I should be able to stumble out of my house - drunk, with a needle hanging from my arm, my nostrils crusted with white powder, a joint hanging out of my mouth - and shout "That bad guy who did those genuinely bad things is right there (pointing) behind that bush!" without fear of it being me that gets busted.
Right now even the friends of casual marijuana smokers want nothing to do with the police so they won't go out of their way to help. It starts right in our schools, might as well start early driving that wedge between the populace and the police. As it stands right now I could go up to a police officer and start to tell them about something they should know about and if they smell pot then immediately I'd be the one to focus on, and not to my benefit, while the really bad abuser of people and/or violator of property rights gets away.
After the police and the justice system send my otherwise moral and principled friend to jail for what is obviously harmless or at worst slightly self-destructive behavior and you can bet that the police/justice system and I won't be co-operating any time soon.
Then, you bar people who may enjoy an occasional cannabis experience from being a police office and only take ones that are willing to persecute people who might have been their friends otherwise, that are willing to arrest people for dope and send them to jail to be brutally conscripted into criminal society. You end up with the Robert Dziekanski "incident".
I know and have known a very large amount of marijuana users over the years and one trait that they share, almost to a person, is that they demonstrate empathy, at least to some degree. Most non-empathetic people I have met (many) tend to use alcohol as their drug of choice, or are "drug free" (if you don't count prescription drugs).
Take that whole group of people (cannabis users) out of the police force as a career pool, already the people who can't stomach persecuting good people for harmless behavior have been voluntarily removed themselves from that pool - what is left but the increased likelihood of being able to find four people who would out and out execute Robert Dziekanski. Of all the dope smokers and junkies I have known I'd be really hard pressed to come up with four of them who would not have shown some concern for the treatment of a fellow human.
The wedge gets driven in deeper. That is one of the true tragedies of drug prohibition. Who knows how good things could be (real crime-wise) if the average citizen and the average cop were on co-operative terms, working towards the same goal? Unless we wise up we'll never know.
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