this is your war on drugs

[John Kilduff]

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The OP really troubles me, and here's why. I don't like people using these arguments, because they're not commonplace.

Before you link up three or four stories to prove me wrong, hear me out. The fact of the matter is, 98% of people currently incarcerated for drug offenses are pure, recreational users. Do I have a problem with recreational drug use? Hell no, marijuana is pretty much harmless, and hard drugs kill people and I look at it as natural selection at it's finest.

But lets be honest here, using arguments like the story in the OP are no different than rabid pro-choicers dragging out stories about twelve year old girls who were raped and inpregnated by their fathers. Does it happen? Sure! Statistically, what percentage of abortions are performed because of that reason? Less than 1%.

The statistics are almost identical for those incarcerated for prescription drug and marijuana offenses who were using for medicinal purposes. I'm against the war on drugs, but lets be against it for the right reason, and not drag out some strawman argument about a situation that is a statistical blip on the radar of the overall picture.

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Ah, I was waiting for someone to make this argument, because I think it's something commonly used to justify all sorts of oppression, namely that the edge cases aren't important.

The edge cases are all that matter.

The drug war/presciption enforcement war itself is justified with an edge case, namely we must prevent the few people who will choose poorly from hurting themselves. And these few edge cases justify implementing a system that will crush a few innocents in its path but that's ok.

I say it's not ok.

I'd prefer to see a few cases of people making bad decisions for themselves than a few cases of the government tyranny.

Under no circumstances should a man like Paey ever serve even one day in jail, and this man should not be written off as collateral damage.

natedogg

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IMO this is an example of exactly why the mandatory minimum system is so evil and should be abolished.


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PS and yes, there's plenty of cases like this and many many more. The drug war has resulted in untold numbers of terrible decisions by our government, Paey is one of thousands like him, but you suspected that when you wrote it.

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Excellent post IMO. The people who are wrongly prosecuted and immorally punished are in the very high numbers. A few might still be too many, but huge numbers of victims of our criminal justice system is a tragic irony. The draconian and largely inflexible criminal justice system in existence today is one of America's greatest evils.