kevstermon

But that is the modus operendi of the ONDCP. Emergency room mentions of marijuana become the cause of visits when patients are there for other purposes. The potency of marijuana is used as a bludgeon to try and associate the effects of marijuana with the much more debilitating effects of crack cocaine. Whats good for the goose is good for the gander and until the Feds recognize reality and abandon the pipe dreams of the pious prohibitionists and movetoharm reduction (at the very least) there will be no progress on this issue and the pointless waste of the aforementioned twelve billion dollars a year will continue while other concerns of the police naturally suffer from the caseload of marijuana procecutions.

Don't get me wrong, I have the utmost respect for the vast majority of honest and dedicated officers who put their lives on the line every day but even the most dedicated officers have to realize that failed political agendas make for unpleasent options on the street level.

Niteshift

That is still around 300,000 arrests or violations just because their electric bill is too high; they are stupid and tell somone that they are growing personal ****; infrared scanners, nosey land lords and neighbors, etc.

Or the most common reason.......we just stumble across it in the course of other activities.

Also let me tell you a little story. I have been smokeing for about 10 years now. 3 years ago I was caught for the first and only time. WHY? Because I turned around in a park 15 min after it closed. When me and my 2 friends were ID'd my one friend was arrested for a bench warrent of non-payment of child support. My car was then searched and after 1 full hour of searching (my car was full of trash and junk) they found a piece of plastic tubing (no bowl) with resin in it and 1 completely empty sandwich bag. I got a $151 ticket for "Opr Motor Veh Outside Designated Area" and a $315 possession ticket. The moment pot is involved, most cops see you as public enemy #1

See what I mean........they stumbled across you guys. They weren't out looking for pot in specific.

And that "public enemy #1" comment is just wrong.

If pot were to be leagal I think we would have less problems with that then we have had with alcohol.

I don't disagree with that at all. I've said more than once on here that alcohol causes me FAR more problems at work than pot ever will. I've never seen anyone smoke a joint then start a bar fight. I can't recall arresting a guy who finished a joint and beat his wife.

And I've said that if I could snap my fingers and make either alcohol or pot disappear from the face of the earth.........the booze would be gone.

I guess what I'm getting at is the idea that pot is "priority #1" or that pot smokers are "public enemy #1" and things like that really bother me, because I KNOW that on my side of the fence, it's simply not true.


But that is the modus operendi of the ONDCP.

First, we're not talking about some ONDCP ad, we're talking about an inflated claim from NORML.

Second, regardless of which side of the issue, isn't it better to use truth and facts instead of false numbers?

the pointless waste of the aforementioned twelve billion dollars a year will continue while other concerns of the police naturally suffer from the caseload of marijuana procecutions.

Honestly, having worked in and alongside the federal government for most of my adult life, I seriously doubt that if pot were legalized tomorrow, that 12 billion would be "returned". They'd simply fund something else more heavily. I can assure you, the DEA would simply put more money into combatting other drugs.

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A burning desire for social justice is never a substitute for knowing what you're talking about. -Thomas Sowell

Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is muzzle flash.

kbhaze

When I was 17, I lived in a small town and my parent's house was raided by a total of 20 officers (2 DEA agents, 6 members of the narcotics task force from a nearby town, 6 city cops, and 6 deputy sheriffs). All of that manpower to find 49 grams of pot. They also reported it to the local media lumped in with an unrelated cocaine bust (making me seem like public enemy #1 to the small community). Maybe things are different where you are, but just because you son't see it doesn't mean it doesn't happen. It just seems like an awful waste of time and money to arrest one teenage potsmoker.

xxdr_zombiexx

This quibbling about exact numbers is useless and a distraction from the point.

600,000, 700,000.....a million, or just 200. What's the difference?

The point is people should not be arrested for touching marijuana in the first place. Nobody.

Arresting half a million or more - the 750,000 seems to be a "rounded up" figure coming from the year 2001, as reported by NORML's analysis of the 2002 UCR - is simply an indefensible outrage.

But it's never reported on the TV so people only blink when they hear it. I love to relate this figure to people whom I KNOW have no clue.

NORML:

What does it cost a person to be arrested? MONEY, thier job, it can potentially cost their home, or get them shot to death. As always, run a search for Donald Scott - it can even happen wealthy white male americans.

I know some disagree for whatever reason, but marijuana suppression - implicitly and/or explicitly - is a huge part of Law Enforcement's mission'.

I base that on both the numbers of arrested people - and the money it costs to sustian that arrest rate, as well as by the cute little stickers cops here - and state cops in Tennessee - have on their back windows of their cars - a psychedelic-looking pot leaf inside the universal red circle with slash.

And then we have all that federal reefer mad propaganda - offically sanctioned slander and lies - telling people marijuana is terrorism. Superbowl ads? Remember?

Marijuna Propaganda is apparently unquestioned by most cops, otherwise they would be in a position where they are knowingly ruining somebodys life for something that is wrong.

It's little different from enforcing slavery laws if you think slavery is a bad thing. Or being a concentration camp guard, of you feel the internees are innocent.

That intra-psychic conflict is called cognative dissonance.

Supressing or eliminating this sort of cognative dissonace is a function of the steady stream of reefer mad propaganda we get, and why DARE is still so important after years of proving to be a FLOP. Cops are people and they have to believe in what they are doing. Reefer madness helps filter out those who are not true believers.

The mere existence of LEAP tells me that there are a lot of cops that see this, and most of these sorts care about real law enforcement and understand that chasing potheads solves absolutley nothing.

But with increasing federal focus on drug testing - the bulk of which can only be about marijuana smoking - there will only be more arrests and ruination of people who want to smoke in their free time.

it's simply prohibition and prohibition is simply wrong.

And an abuse of "the Law".

Note: AMERICA was not attacked by pot smokers.
That lame 9/11 Commission will never consider the role played by the sheer waste of law enforcement effort and attention needed to arrest so many people for absolutely nothing.

See: Can't Win War on Terror Fighting a War on Drugs

and

The FBI's dangerous drug-war obsession
Before Sept. 11, the FBI was too focused on busting pot smokers to see the warning signs of a looming terrorist attack. (Salon, July 2002)

The only terrorist they caught - Zacarious Mossaoui [sp?] - got a whole lot more legal consideration than Tommy Chong or Ed Rosenthal.

Go figure that out.

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Torture Good, Healthcare Bad, Marijuana Evil.

There's no money for your issue so long as we're squandering $50 billion a year on the DrugWar. Ben Masel