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newgrowerNY

The land of the unfree
01.29.07|Backwoodshome.Com|John Silveira

It’s official! The numbers are in once again! For I-don’t-know-how-many-years-running, the United States, this so-called “land of the free,” is imprisoning more people, in both absolute numbers and percentage of its population, than any other country in the world. Russia? China? Cuba? Zimbabwe? Vietnam? We put more people in the calaboose than any of them. And it’s not vast numbers of illegal aliens pouring over our borders we’re incarcerating. It’s not terrorists. It’s us. We’re locking each other up in record numbers. This shouldn’t come as any surprise because all the figures that support what I’m saying come straight from our own justice department. Yet it is a surprise to most people I talk with.

What’s amazing is that some 80 percent of those in prison are there because of what they do to themselves. They’re not murderers, rapists, child molesters, or robbers. They’re not purveyors of death, mayhem, plunder, and destruction. They’re simply people who are doing what they want with their own bodies. During Prohibition, it was a bottle of whiskey that could put you in the clink. Today, it’s “Light up a joint and go to the Big House.” In fact, take out the murderers, child molesters, rapists, and robbers, and leave nothing but the consensual criminals, and we’d still have more people in prison than any other country.

It’s insane how we Americans are bent on regulating each others’ behavior. Witness seat belt laws (yes, you should drive with your seat belt on, but having cops pulling you over to enforce it?), drug laws, licensing laws, zoning laws, eminent domain abuses, blue laws, “free speech zones;” the list goes on ad nauseum. We think of ourselves as free, but we are simply the most regulated society in history. And we have more new rules, laws, and regulations pouring out of our legislatures and bureaucracies every year than any other country ever. We just can’t get over this uniquely American obsession of outlawing each other’s behavior—and fining or jailing those who don’t comply or conform.

And get this: We also have record numbers of people whose livelihoods now depend on ensuring others are deprived of their liberty. Get rid of victimless crimes and you’d have to lay off tens of thousands of cops and start shutting down prisons, and most lawyers would have to find a productive line of work. Even drug kingpins would have to start flipping burgers when the prices of their drugs crash because they’re not “regulated” by government prohibition. So, we’re not only bent on jailing those whose behavior we disapprove of, there are millions of Americans with economic reasons for keeping other Americans unfree, disenfranchised, and locked up. Because paying off mortgages, funding IRAs, and making car payments depend on the system as it stands, there is zero possibility that the problems all these regulations are supposed to be solving will ever go away. Worse, if they did go away, do you really think the regulators will clean out their desks and go home? They won’t. They’ll create new laws, new reasons to throw you, your family, your friends, and your neighbors in prison. Little Johnny needs braces, so off you go to the dungeon. Imprisoning each other is now as American as apple pie.

And, by the way, if the price of “illegal” drugs drops to that of a six pack of beer, drug users will no longer have to burgle, rob, or assault to get money to feed their habits. They'll be able to afford to buy them while they’re flipping burgers alongside the erstwhile drug kingpins. So, even the rate of violent crime will drop. That is, there’ll be even fewer people in prison for violent crimes than there are now.

Despite the fact that this country was founded on the concept of natural or God-given rights, in other words, rights no man could take away, we have come to the belief that with a simple majority vote we can and should be able to deprive anyone of his or her rights.

Decades ago I read a statement by a historian who said that long after the fall of the Roman Empire, people still pridefully regarded themselves as Romans. He wrote they just didn’t know or care to admit that Rome had become a victim of its own excesses and decadence and that the Empire was gone—and so was Rome.

In the same vein, we are no longer the Land of the Free. Those days are gone. Yet, we still boast of it as if all those freedoms we were once ensured still exist. And we still kid ourselves about them. There are people who still buy the line that the reason for 9/11 was that the terrorists hate us for our freedoms and our democracy. Folks, that had zero to do with it. Most of our freedoms were seriously eroded or long gone well before that tragic day. And it wasn’t because of terrorists. We’ve been taking them away from ourselves. Yes, a country founded on the concept of individual freedom, and supposedly governed by one of the greatest documents ever written, now blithely ignores both its heritage and its Constitution—including its Bill of Rights.

I’ll bet that the last time most people read any part of the Constitution was as a kid, for a school assignment, and not as an adult when it would now mean something to them. And, having read it way back then, they’re not going to read it again. Not now. And because of that, they have no idea what the limits are that are supposed to be placed on our government; they have no idea what their freedoms are.

So, next year, I expect even more Americans to be imprisoned by their fellow countrymen. I expect more laws on the books at federal, state, and local levels. I expect more of our behaviors to be regulated. I expect more cops, lawyers, prison guards, and prisons. I expect more idiots will still be calling this “The Land of the Free.” Like the Romans of old, we’re not smart enough to see that those days are long gone.

 

Abomonog

We have 2.5 million laws governing us at any given moment. Communist Russia was a distant second at barely 20,000 laws when it collapsed.

Our government was supposed to be an "open forum" where the average joe could walk into walk into Congress, write up a bill, and present it. Remember Metallicas' visit to congress? Well that right is supposed to be reserved for everyone, but it's only available to those who have the money to buy their way in. And even that visit is rare these days as usually only lobbiests address congress.

Most of those 2.5 million laws are there either for the sole purpose of robbing the poor to buy the rich a new Lexus, or to keep the numbers up to ensure the public is fearful enough to look away when more freedoms are stripped away.

We have also gotten around the double jeopardy clause by a process I call "charge stacking". This is the act of making every single step of a crime a separate crime. To make it simple, lets just say Joe was caught smoking a bowl. Years ago it would have been a single possession charge. Today, it's a myriad of charges in most places. Possession of MJ. Possession of the pipe. Possession of marijuana resin. (the bowl wasn't clean, this is an extra charge here in Va.). Being under the influence of illegal drugs. Public intoxication. The topper? Well, because of a federal law outlawing your bowl, Refusal to reveal where you bought said bowl when asked can grab you an obstruction of justice charge if the DA is feeling like it. Many states also reserve a felony called "conspiracy to possess" for those they really want to throw in jail bad or those arrests that the police botched publicly and really need to save face.
And since you had the weed,, you MUST have conspired to get it.

It's a pity that most of us MJ smokers are a sniveling bunch of cowards who hide behind forums feeling sorry for those few who go down sticking up for the rest of us. We are the largest minority that has ever existed. When is it time to behave like we have more people than most countries. We number 50 million strong in America alone. So when is enough abuse and persecution enough?

I recently read an article about Georgia's prisons. They had a photo of a minimum security security prison reserved for rehabilitating drug offenders.

All the prisoners were out in fields picking cotton ala early Victorian style (bare handed and no tools even though an operating picker/cotton gin was seen in the background of the shot, so new it was shiny). The warden in the article said his prison was a model of drug rehab. (please excuse language here) In VA. roadside maitenence has been shifted from private landscapers to prison workers. In Florida nearly all heavy public landscaping is done by jails and prisons. Slavery is back folks, and drug users are the new ni**ers.
You're not seeing rapists picking cotton and filling in sinkholes. You're looking at drug users. Wake up people!

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It's all fun and games until the flying monkeys attack!

newgrowerNY

Lots of anger and hostility here. We need to one another .. not go around and the rest of us. Roll up a phatty and relax my brother. Most of the arrests are of grow houses and people trafficking drugs .. how are they sticking up for us ? They don't want to be legal anymore than the government.

= legal

Price = plummet

I would say drug dealers .. not users.

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Disclaimer: I love to grow

1tokeovertheline

I prefer you keep the stereo-type to include maybe yourself.

I smoke, I don't snivel, I am not a coward, I don't hide feeling sorry for anybody, if I feel sorry for someone I tell them. I don't think anybody went down sticking up for me, if they did they didn't need to bother. I can stick up for myself fine, thank you. I have been for over a half a century.

and.......what ngNY said.

Buzzby

What would you like us to do? Storm the Bastille?

No. That would be men, who represent 48% of the population, followed by Hispanics and African-Americans.

Marijuana users do not constitute a majority anywhere. As things stand, 99.7% of us don't even care enough to join a pro-legalization organization.

A much better estimate is 24,000,000.

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Buzzby

Oops! A duplicate of the previous post.

Belladom

I liked Abomonog's reply, though I do respect the corrections offered. I almost thought that you were a little harsh, Buzzby, but then I realize that you're only interested in spreading as much truth around as you can (aparently). I do know alot of pot smokers who I would maybe call cowardly on a bad day but I don't think there are many stoners who feel sorry for the fallen activists. I interpret the act of feeling sorry for to mean that the activist should be sorry he bothered, but since he's not I'll feel sorry for him/her, even though I don't think that's what was really meant from the heart.

I never before considered how many jobs are riding on prohibition and litigation, and now that it's dawning on me it makes me rather sad because it seems to be a lose-lose situtation. Either someone loses rights or somebody else loses their job, I would say rights are worth more than work but I'm not gonna claim that one as a fact.

Now that I've said that though I wonder if maybe the job situtation wasn't fabricated by people who have an unfair intolerance towards pot, because certainly there are plenty of areas where crime un-related to pot continues to florish (child victimizers, rapists, murderers, spousal abuse, hate crime; to say nothing of hard drugs because I'm not convinced those should be illegal either). Yes, it seems that I can look at both sides of this coin and since I'm too lazy to research it more and wouldn't know what to do with the facts if I had them I think I'll just go to sleep (I DO realize the irony).

dedbr

I am sick and tired of these people bitchin about how many drug users get locked up every year, but have never been their themselves.

NewgrowerNY......

It's a hundred dollar fine for possesion in Ohio. That's for small amounts of course. Get busted with a lbs. or two and your a drug dealer. Laws make drug dealer's, not people.

If it wasn't for people willing to take the risks for the profit, none of us could smoke because there wouldn't be any!

Drug prohibition is brought on by money, pure and simple. And since Uncle Sam isn't getting his cut, we are treated like babies instead of free Americans because there's a buck in it for someone.......

OK. Rant off.


Some Where In Ded Land.........

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"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."

Abraham Lincoln
Happy New Year.......

newgrowerNY

Its been my experiance that if you have more than a pound at your house, chances are, you are selling it. A pound would dry out before I had a chance to smoke it all. Of course every instance has its own unique circumstances.

With the information on the internet and what you can find in books, everyone who uses could be self sufficient by growing their own. Drug Dealers are out to make one thing .. $$ .. Thats why they take the risk .. not to ensure their customers are supplied with the product. They get no thanks in my book.

Your right, but Uncle Sam is getting his cut .. The DEA is a Federal Funded Agency. Thats why drugs are illegal. And the DEA will throw money at the local law enforcement also when they help out.

Wrap your mind around this one .. all the DEA has to do is wait for a big drug ring to make a certian amount of $$ (cash and assets . .house .. boat) before they go in and seize the property. Bingo .. a multi million dollar bust. Goverment seizes the assets and viola .. nice cash influx for the goverment. Now take a look at the other side. Joe Smoe sells an ounce for 100$ out of his store front because it legal and lots of stores are selling it. Lets say their is a 30% tax on the sale. Wow 30$ goes to uncle sam from that bag. And now that its legal, lots of personal use people are growing it themselves. Sales drop .. taxes go up .. and then even more people stop buying it (all theory made up my me)

This my hitting buddys is why I feel that is illegal and will be one hell of a fight to make it legal.

Thats my story and I am sticking to it.

dedbr

I just had a friend get busted with three garbage bags full of his own personal harvest. He's now charged with aggravated trafficking in drugs, namely marijuana. He's never sold so much as a joint in his whole life. Laws make drug dealer's, not profit.

Yeah, your right. There is all kinda info on the net about growing, but there is such a thing as instant gratification, and most of the people I know would rather buy than screw with it. Takes too long.

Sure salesmen make a profit. That's why you do it. No one does anything for free.

Now wrap your mind around this one, NY......the DEA wouldn't have anything to do if herb were legalized. 90 percent of their business is pot. That's why their still here. 450 billion a year in budget and they waste their time on pot.

Drug dealer is so stupid a term as to make me want to vomit. Drug war propaganda has made all of us drug dealer's, and we can't even get our own side to see the futility of promoting pot use while cursing dealers as the scourge of the earth. The two just don't go together.


Some Where In Ded Land..............