I don't go to court often. But when I do it is usually for a commercial client who has received a summons for some alleged city code violations - which makes the charge ostensibly a criminal charge. While waiting to have the matter ultimately dismissed, I have to sit through all kinds of criminal cases. Among the most numerous are the drug charges arising from possession of marijuana. Most of the defendants are young and, at least in Norfolk, the vast majority are young blacks. The end result is that many end up incarcerated with permanent criminal records rendering them unemployable in some instances. The other end result is our jails and prisons are overflowing. In a main page editorial, the New York Times calls for sanity and a repeal of modern day prohibition against marijuana. Here are excerpts:
It took 13 years for the United States to come to its senses and end Prohibition, 13 years in which people kept drinking, otherwise law-abiding citizens became criminals and crime syndicates arose and flourished. It has been more than 40 years since Congress passed the current ban on marijuana, inflicting great harm on society just to prohibit a substance far less dangerous than alcohol.
The federal government should repeal the ban on marijuana.
We reached that conclusion after a great deal of discussion among the members of The Times’s Editorial Board, inspired by a rapidly growing movement among the states to reform marijuana laws.
There are no perfect answers to people’s legitimate concerns about marijuana use. But neither are there such answers about tobacco or alcohol, and we believe that on every level — health effects, the impact on society and law-and-order issues — the balance falls squarely on the side of national legalization. That will put decisions on whether to allow recreational or medicinal production and use where it belongs — at the state level.
The social costs of the marijuana laws are vast. There were 658,000 arrests for marijuana possession in 2012, according to F.B.I. figures, compared with 256,000 for cocaine, heroin and their derivatives. Even worse, the result is racist, falling disproportionately on young black men, ruining their lives and creating new generations of career criminals.
There is honest debate among scientists about the health effects of marijuana, but we believe that the evidence is overwhelming that addiction and dependence are relatively minor problems, especially compared with alcohol and tobacco. Moderate use of marijuana does not appear to pose a risk for otherwise healthy adults. Claims that marijuana is a gateway to more dangerous drugs are as fanciful as the “Reefer Madness” images of murder, rape and suicide.
[W]e advocate the prohibition of sales to people under 21.
Creating systems for regulating manufacture, sale and marketing will be complex. But those problems are solvable, and would have long been dealt with had we as a nation not clung to the decision to make marijuana production and use a federal crime.
We recognize that this Congress is as unlikely to take action on marijuana as it has been on other big issues. But it is long past time to repeal this version of Prohibition.
Decriminalization will be a hard sell with the GOP: today's Republicans want as many blacks as possible to have criminal records so that they can have them disenfranchised. It's an ugly truth, but the truth nonetheless.
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