I have never had an issue with weed and city police - lost a few bags and got told to go back in the bar and "get drunk with everyone else". Some of my non-white friends do not have the same experience despite being in a similar place in life to me (education, job, clean record, etc.). This is the part where LEO deserve a bit of scrutiny between the laws and the citizens.
It is not a stretch to point out the relationship between public perceptions of police and the actions of the police enforcing current laws. One fails to connect the negative impacts of the law by engaging in cognitive dissonance regarding the multigenerational results of those enforcement actions. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
As a corollary, choosing not to enforce because you don't like the law leads to contempt for law you support.
Selective enforcement and discretion will always exist. The officer has less and less discretion these days due to pressures from both above and below. Current state of the industry; prosecutors and officers tayloring their behavior to meet numeric performance goals that inevitably turn out to be a destructive force on mostly lower income people who can't afford proper legal representation. The drug war is counterproductive by design and thus contributes to poor community efficacy.
Say what? What part of what I ACTUALLY said is dishonest, be specific cuz the rest of your rant made no sense to what I said....
That's funny, in my 26yrs, I've given far more breaks/chances/opportunities to people of color than those who share my skin tone.......PERIOD! And I was far from being the only guy doing that. A lot of folks in this field have bigger hearts than the vast majority of the haters will ever acknowledge. Seriously, some of you either have massive perception problems with LE related topics where y'all just automatically jump to the worst conclusions OR you live in a really shitty area....MOVE, if the latter.
There is a war on weed and it is directly related to public perceptions of police. https://www.google.com/amp/www.foxnews.com/story/2004/08/04/cops-make-major-hibiscus-bust.amp.html
This is a personal anecdote. There is a plethora of evidence from academic studies documenting disproportionate minority rates of arrests. Perhaps the horse's mouth could convince you... https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cn...chard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/index.html
Perhaps you might apply some logical reasoning to the issue of illegal drugs, who sells them, and who uses them. During the Nixon era law enforcement went after those that sold illegal drugs according to the laws that Congress passed. That, my friend, was mostly members of the black race. Look at why those folks were in the drug business. Not much education, no decent jobs to be had because of no education, so the easy money was in selling illegal drugs since there are/were always idiots that want to buy them. Simple huh? The idea of the war on drugs was a simplistic yet sound idea. It just didn't, nor could it, work. As society has evolved since the Nixon era the demand for drugs has only increased so now many other races sell drugs also. Obviously, to those that use drugs, they are harmless. At least the idiots using the drugs want to believe that they're harmless. They're really not ya know.
Yes I know. I'm directly referring to instances where the criminal justice system's attempts to help remediate drug use are often much more harmful to both the individual and the community than the crap they put into their body.
This is the tripe the MSM feeds the masses and they gobble the shit up.....it's actually quite amusing, sad but amusing. I guess it's true, everyone in prison is innocent too, huh? So have you found the stats proving how flooded our prison system is with simple possession MJ users? Nah? I didn't think so. What about the War on Weed? The linked article you provided didn't make one single mention of the DEA, am I being dishonest there too?
See here is my point . And here you are missing it completely. You revived this thread and referenced an individual who took your previously posted advice for a solution and actually did move to a place where he was no longer considered a criminal as a result of his personal behavior. You have yet to convince me that this behavior is not being prosecuted in states where it can be. Furthermore, the current law as it stands in Ohio, which is the actual topic of this thread, is still dramatically affecting lives in a detrimental way. Does this mean I agree with the establishment of a State run monopoly? NO Since we are resorting to personal anecdotes as proof here is one... While obtaining my masters degree in criminal justice one of my fellow students was a retired DEA agent who retained a strong bias against marijuana once calling grow operations just as dangerous as meth labs, so while I could cite plenty of legitimate studies that are not "MSM tripe", I have since graduated and put my academic studies behind me. Essentially.... "Methinks thou dost protest too much"
Le sigh If there is no war on weed why did ganjaman move in the first place? There is a war on weed that involves the federal government and while prisons may not be full of those prosecuted for it by the prison industrial complex, the detrimental results of those prosecutions can have lifelong consequences historically impacting minority and low income populations, thus affecting public opinion. I stand by this thesis.
A master's degree huh??? Wow, impressive, while pursuing this degree did they actually educate you on how to manufacture an argument that was never made too? The so called WOD is fought at many levels, however, IMHO the more meaningful long term investigations tend to be conducted by the Feds -specifically the DEA, however other Fed branches have been known to run with their own narco investigations too. Dream up any other scenarios that you wish but simply put, Feds don't get involved in MJ cases UNLESS it's a semi- truck type load which simply doesn't happen much anymore. I don't know how much clearer I could have said it when I said any MJ tips the Feds receive or gain through an active invest, they'll typically send it down the line to local PD's. No where did I say MJ prosecutions have seized to occur, that was the little voices in your own head. Congrats on the Master's tho. As for your retired DEA friend's remark comparing the two drugs, in what context was he speaking, do you think, regarding their danger?
Because minorities cannot figure out the detriment on their own? At what point should someone conclude maybe doing this is a bad idea? Personally? I've been for legalization for a loooooooooong time. However, the importance of another means to escape reality simply hasn't been high on my things that matter much in life meter.