Marijuana.com

Logos

I found this yesterday in my travels. It gives an excellent example of how someone goes to jail not to be rehabilitated, but to be re-educated.

Maybe I'm taking things a bit out of perspective but I don't view jail as rehabilitation, and I don't think that a person that has done the time should necessairally be denied the RIGHT to vote.

Why do people get out of jail only to end up right back in jail? I don't think it is always because they don't want to be team players, I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that they have to deal with that stigma for the rest of their life.

Where marijuana is concerned, that is not fair. Especially when someone drives drunk kills someone and gets a slap on the hand. I know people that fall into that category.

I personnally don't feel that anyone's RIGHT to vote should be taken away. Maybe while behind bars, but not otherwise.

This came from http://www.jeffandtracy.com

My name is Brad and until recently I was a police officer in Texas. I was a pot smoker up to the time that I started the police academy and quit because of an integrity issue (I won't be out there breaking the law if I am enforcing the law). I entered into the profession of law enforcement because I wanted a profession that I could help people in. Well, after ten years of that job, I found that helping people is not what police work is all about anymore. I still feel the root of that job is to help people, but mostly now it is about controlling people and forcing them to do what it is our "society" wants them to do. Now, don't get me wrong, I had alot of fun and put alot of really bad people behind bars, but I just could not find the value in that job anymore, so I quit.

Now, I am out of that profession and have started smoking again. I have also followed the other side of the battle of the drug issue and am disgusted at the way our world looks at the "typical" smoker. I see that society/government will look at the weed smoker in the same light as a crack smoker and this just isn't so. I see how people place the old "smoke weed and you will progress to more intense drug use" persona on smokers. I have personally seen people go to jail for longer sentences for posession of a pound of marijuana than of the guy who burglarized and raped an 80 year old woman. Now, let me get to my point.

Here is one of the reasons that I feel that people progress to that "next stage". Lets say "Billy" gets busted selling an ounce of the "kind" to an undercover and is now convicted of delivery of marijuana. "Billy" is 21 and has never really had a bad time with the police, but he gets sentenced to 6 months in the county jail. Now imagine the life of "Billy" while he lives on the inside (and the general public has absolutely NO IDEA what that is like), There are rapes, fights, he will live with rapists, crack heads, burgulars and maybe even killers. The inmates inside of the jail system now have more rights than the police do and they decide that when they don't get their way, they will take a little **** and piss, mix it together and throw it on the guards to show them that they can (this is not an exageration. This happens every day)and the guards have no right to go and beat the **** out of these animals. These people hustle for drugs, cigarettes, and ass inside 24 hours a day,7 days a week for 6 months. What rehabilitation and lessons is Billy learning?

Now, Billy lives with this for six months, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and he gets the opportunity to go to the library once or twice a week for an hour at a time (maybe) to better himself and be rehabilitated. Now,what do you think "good little Billy" is being taught for his awful crime that he committed? Think about a cult, how long does it take for a cult to enroll someone into their way of thinking and being? How long will it take Billy to be enrolled in this way of thinking or being?

So now, six months later, Billy is out and is a brand new man. He has made some new friends and learned some new things. Billy is ready to get out into the world and try out all the new ideas he has and is joyfull in his rehabilitation. This is the question I ask... Did Billy graduate to bigger problems by using marijuana or have we graduated Billy to a new level by trying to teach him a lesson for his henious crime? Hmmmmm....What do you think?

Now, I am not trying to make Billy the victim here and I feel that he has his own choices, but tell me what 17-21 year old boy out there is making his "own" choices? I see that "society" might want to look at what we are creating. Have you ever heard the old saying "what you resist, persists".

Love and Peace.....Brad
"life is not measured by the breaths you take but by the moments that take your breath away".... Author unknown

__________________
Brother Logos
The more I learn, the less I know. | Truth doesn't change, only our perception of it does.
THC Ministry | The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ | The Reluctant Messenger of Science and Religion
True religion is real living, living with all one's soul, with all ones goodness and righteousness. --Albert Einstein

 

Conine

Perhaps, but the question is, do felons end up right back in jail because they are pre-disposed to ignoring the law, or because they've become such lower class citizens that the system has effectively given them that much less to lose? Your options to follow the straight and narrow diminish with a felony conviciton.

{erase tangent}

Back to the point - if these guys end right back up in jail, what's the problem? Not like they'll be voting, right?

That's how the system works. If you choose to circumvent the system by deciding on your own which laws should be followed and which ones are "bad", then you have made the choice to not play by the rules and forfeit your right to be included in the system.

OK, but see, that makes sense to me while you're serving your sentence. You're forfeiting all of your rights to be included in the system while you're in jail or otherwise under sentence, probation, or what have you. Once put back into the system, you have the stigma of a felony record (OK, it would be nice to know that you didn't just hire a serial killer), a firearms restriction (OK, for the sake of public safety we can't let known killers re-arm themselves), and you lose the right to vote. Where's the public safety concern there? Seems unnecessary. If a person wants to turn their life around, I don't see how taking their vote away is anything but punative.

__________________
Freedom is the right to choose the habits that bind you.
Posting Guidelines

KWhite

And I would counter that by saying that any law can be changed. You know how to do it. But until you properly change the law, you are bound by its rule and if you choose to break it, you willingly accept the fact that it has consequences.

Not if, as postulated, the vote is removed from any non-conformist/s!

The danger implicit is glaring. Where is the balance?
The people are the final check on the balance that is the congress.
And we accomplish that by extending or recalling the mandate given at election time.
The surest way I can think of to circumvent the final balance of job approval is to load the dice.
And selectively remove the vote.
Yes, I choose to do an illegal thing.
If I understand your position, prudence would caution me to not use marijuana at all until the time comes when I have assembled enough votes to convince the proxies to consider my opinion?

And Rosa Parks should have not sat down in the back of the bus at that time either.

It was illegal for her to do that I believe.
The consequences of my actions should be limited. Using your argument of varying degrees of battery, and postulating an adminsitration that is inflexible on crime. They could say that all battery, regardless of mitigating circumstance or degree of severity is to be tried as a felony and the minimum mandatory sentence is disenfranchisement.

Wow, we have just taken the voice from a lot of people.
Postulating a moralistic rigid administration is really just not that hard to do nowadays.

I do not trust this administration. I mistrust, if not the motives of Mr. Ashcroft then his motivations. You are correct, currently most of us are underneath the possession levels that would incite the federal police entities to take action.
However those levels are rather easily changed, and compelling interest can seemingly be prefabricated for anything that does not meet with the administrations approval.
Please remember, this from an administration which considers "You are either with us, or against us" to be the height of diplomacy.
It has NOT been shown that he meant to exclude dissenting Americans from that prophetic statement.


Now, once I have paid my supposed debt for not following the rules emplaced by proxy upon me I should be able to vote out the politician who disagrees with me.
If I can find enough voters who agree with me enough.
If not, at least I had my say at the poll.
But the proposal being discussed would disenfranchise me and many others forever. The process would take time, but eventually, we would have only those voters who are team players going to the polls.
No one else need apply.
Never again be able to change the proxies?
That works suspiciously to the proxies advantage I think.

Yes, I am very paranoid in light of developments recent and not so.

I find the idea odious, dangerous and very probably traitorous.

Kelly

__________________
"Your mind is your own, your body as well, from the soul we need not speak, tend it well, making those decisions you deem worthy, aware all responsibility is in your hands when the smoke clears" Kelly L. White

"It is a principle of natural justice that when bad men make bad laws, or when unprincipled authorities compromise good ones, citizens are justified in protecting themselves from the very authority that compromised law and order." Gandhi

Our Posting Guidelines

Bongwater19

what is the best way to fight for cannabis legalization without breaking a law?

__________________
remember team, surrender the mead for the weed!

AnarchistBarbie

Bust out those knee pads, and get down to some serious work sucking politician d*ck to get them to throw their votes in favor of legalization - but now, we've all got to do our very best, or we'll have to be at it again and again trying to keep their votes. Not all politicians stay bought.

[apologies to all for this moment of vicious cynicism]

__________________
Life has no dress code.

 

Newrea64

Always comes down to the same thing.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Need I say more?