Justice in America is a mixed bag (pun intended). Check these two articles.
======================
Medical marijuana dispensaries outnumber Starbucks in L.A.
by Marcus Wohlsen and Greg Risling -
http://durangoherald.com/sections/News/2009/11/08/Medical_marijuana_dispensaries_outnumber_Starbucks_in_LA/Associated Press Writers - Sunday, November 08, 2009 12:01AM
SEBASTOPOL, Calif. - The medical marijuana dispensary in this California wine country town is in a former auto dealership, and has more registered patients than the town has residents. Los Angeles has more dispensaries than Starbucks and almost as many as public schools.
The surge in medical marijuana in California has left many communities scrambling to regulate the free-for-all, while others are trying to ban the drug altogether. The issue took on greater urgency after the Obama administration announced looser federal marijuana guidelines last month.
Some local governments are looking to take an approach similar to Sebastopol, where officials welcome the business as a strong source of tax revenue during the recession.
The Peace in Medicine marijuana dispensary is a clean, modern operation and easily could be mistaken for a doctor's office, if not for the three security guards and overwhelming skunky smell of pot. ............
=====================================
The American War on Pot Rolls On
By Sherwood Ross - November 7, 2009 -
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/110709c.htmlEditor’s Note: At a time when American prisons are overflowing and government budgets are busting, authorities across the United States continue to arrest and prosecute hundreds of thousands of people for marijuana possession, sometimes even for small amounts.
In this guest essay, journalist Sherwood Ross examines this excessive use of government power against citizens engaging in personal behavior that many doctors say isn’t as dangerous as drinking alcohol and far less risky than smoking cigarettes:
Seven million Americans have been arrested since 1995 on marijuana charges and 41,000 of them are rotting in federal and state prisons. Thousands of other pot users and sellers are confined in local jails. But the public is starting to rebel against “the preposterous war on pot,” two political scientists say.
People convicted of possessing even one ounce of marijuana can face a mandatory minimum sentence of a year in jail, and having even one plant in your yard is a federal felony,” progressive organizer Jim Hightower and co-author Phillip Frazer point out in the November issue of “The Hightower Lowdown.”
Police arrest someone in America every 36 seconds on marijuana charges, with a record 872,000 arrests made in 2007, “more than for all violent crimes combined,” Hightower and Frazer point out. They note that 89 per cent of all marijuana arrests “are for simple possession of the weed, not for producing or selling it.”
They argue the drug war “is doing far more harm than marijuana itself ever will,” because (1) it diverts hundreds of thousands of police agents from serious crimes “to the pursuit of harmless tokers”; (2) it costs taxpayers at minimum $10 billion a year to catch, prosecute and incarcerate marijuana users and sellers; (3) it enables government to snatch the cars, money, computers and other properties of people caught up in drug raids even if they have had no charges filed against them; and (4) it allows “police agents at all levels to trample our Bill of Rights in their eagerness to nab pot consumers.”
The drug war has also unleashed a torrent of racism ...............
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
