When our society choses to lock up people for drug use, who bears the cost? The tax payer. When we increase police activity to catch drug users who pays the cost? The tax payer. What about other costs, like the increased police activity and harassment of innocent citizens, whom the police are scrutinizing in an effort to find more drug users? Everyone pays that cost. Who receives a benefit? Nobody.
America is unique in its founding as a Christian nation. The intentional cultural component of the Christian faith as an aspect of civil government and society influenced how we expect our society should function. In the 1960's we allowed our court system to begin dismantling that cultural component. We were told that "losing up" would solve many of our problems.
We have now had over 100 years of prohibition against marijuana in various states. We have had over 40 years of deliberate distancing from our cultural foundations. We've had "the war on drugs" for over 30 years. Nothing has worked.
We legislated morality. We still had some people (mostly immigrants in the beginning) use pot. We liberalized our social mores and removed the religious component from our society, even more people smoked pot. We ramped up the War On Drugs and still, people are smoking pot.
All we have gotten for our efforts, is reduced personal freedom, increased enforcement costs, and a waste of tax payer money to try to keep people from smoking pot. Lets try something new. Lets decriminalize personal possession and use. That will reduce our cost as a society. Then let anyone who wants to discriminate against pot users. Like in this story:
Whoa, dude! Pot smokers weeded out from jobs
Personally I wouldn't have fired the man involved in this story, but I'm not his boss. The employee who used the drug is the one bearing the greatest cost. Which is how it should be. We don't need cops running around enforcing laws and protecting us from victimless crime.
Lest I be accused of being heartless towards a quadriplegic, I'm not. I think he should be able to use any substance to ease his legitimate medical condition. I think they should make an exception for medical use of all substances and protocols. However, I'd rather see this guy lose his job than see him doing 2 to 10 on a drug conviction.
Personally I wouldn't have fired the man involved in this story, but I'm not his boss. The employee who used the drug is the one bearing the greatest cost. Which is how it should be. We don't need cops running around enforcing laws and protecting us from victimless crime.
Lest I be accused of being heartless towards a quadriplegic, I'm not. I think he should be able to use any substance to ease his legitimate medical condition. I think they should make an exception for medical use of all substances and protocols. However, I'd rather see this guy lose his job than see him doing 2 to 10 on a drug conviction.
The entire penal system is a joke.
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting that nowhere in the Torah will you find a command to build prisons. All capital crimes were handled by removing the offender from the earth, while all other crimes involved some form of indentured servitude or restitution which I think provides the optimal chances of true reform.
As it is now, the offenders never even have to face the ones whom they assaulted or robbed or whatever, let alone spend a number of years working for the the offended party to 'repay' the offended party for their crime. I think the recidivism rate would drop dramatically if we adopted this approach to true reform.
The current penal system is anything but 'correctional' but it is great at re-forming the 'criminals' into more hardened and persistent offenders.
In the OT, God instructed that 6 walled cities be designated as sanctuary cities. If you committed an offence, you ran like crazy to the closest city.
DeleteYou were safe there as long as you stayed put. I don't have my Bible handy, but deliberate murders were probably handled differently even if they made it to the city.
With those cities, they really did not need the prisons.
The ignoring of the victim makes the "justice" system a total joke. When you worry more about the criminal's rights over the victim's, that is just a sad state of affairs in this country.
" . . . deliberate murders were probably handled differently even if they made it to the city."
DeleteYes, the cities were established for a specific reason: unintentional homicide. The offender could flee to one of these cities for refuge from the avenger of blood and if he was not guilty of pre-meditated murder, would reside safely in the city until the death of the High Priest (which is a beautiful picture of the Messiah and his atoning sacrifice, BTW).
But, generally speaking, no prisons, just the opportunity for true and lasting reform. I just can't fathom how locking a man up could possibly reform anyone in the long term. The system is beyond broken. Truly a tragedy.
You are both wise. I agree. Lets decriminalize pot. Lets cut the DEA completely and cut the police forces in half.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately someone has decided the American people can't be trusted with freedom. Just saw this quote:
"If you can trust people with freedom, how can you trust them with power?"
Bingo.
Oh they work and pay, in our modern prison system the inmates are often forced to do labor, for the benefit of the corporations who imprison them. States even have contracts with these companies that guarantee that they will keep their prisons filled to a certain capacity. Its a prisoner for profit scheme.
ReplyDeleteWe are never going to get people to stop smoking pot. What we can do is keep from making the situation worse and decrease our cost as a society. Far better to have a company say if you smoke pot you can't work here or we won't rent you an apartment or insure you etc than waste the $$ on cops and jails.
I hate to see that guy lose his job, but he did know the policy of the company and he could have tried to get accommodation for his medical condition before they caught him with a drug test. Even with that though, how much worse would it be if he had to send a couple of years as a convicted felon in a prison cell?
They could cut a whole lot of cost down if they would go back to using prison labor to do most everything from picking produce to road work. I have no problem with a prisoner learning a trade that way, all the while he is paying for his upkeep at the jail/prison.
ReplyDeleteSocial ostracism went away Res when we got rid of the concept of personal responsibility. Personal responsibility is also what helps you understand shame. Ostracism does not work well without that sense of shame.
ReplyDeleteOne of the first thinks kids are taught is that not only do parents have no right to go into their bedrooms without the permission of the kid, but that there is no black/white, no good/evil, only perspectives and maybe's and gray, cloudy areas. They are taught well the definition of the question "what is truth?" by their teachers. This is in the first and second grade.
My daughter and I had quite the tangle when I had to tell her that while I respect some sense of privacy for her, under MY roof, I have every right to go where ever I wanted, anytime I wanted. With very few exceptions, like was she getting dressed or some such.
By the very things that they teach from 1st grade on, they have pretty much made the logical methods of societal control useless.
When we increase police activity to catch drug users who pays the cost? The tax payer. What about other costs, like the increased police activity and harassment of innocent citizens, whom the police are scrutinizing in an effort to find more drug users? Everyone pays that cost. Who receives a benefit? Nobody. Not nobody, the police benefit, the politicians benefit, many government entities benefit. The war on drugs is a great excuse to monitor phone calls, email, etc. There are many, many, many examples of this being abused, that is, using tools developed for the war on drugs to target political enemies, see all the midnight no-knock raids carried out in Wisconsin, the various tea party folks that were harassed, the Black Panther informers that were killed, the Hollywood commies that were harassed, ("our side" shouldn't do this either).
ReplyDelete