Marijuana penalties

[dazzleman]

Confiscation, fine and community service.  No jail time for possession of marijuana only.

[dazzleman]

Just confiscation, and as angus said make sure the cops write up the details.

That's almost tantamount to making it legal.  If you support confiscation only, you might as well go for legalization.

[dazzleman]

Actually I agree with that sentiment.  If it's legal, then it should be legal.  But if not, then we should be serious about deterring its use.  I disagree that it merits a fine, but I think some appropriate community service (real community service too, not just playing spades with the guards and watching the clock at a youth center for eight hours on a saturday.)  Having folks do things like tutoring is great, as it exercises their minds and involves them with helping others.  Giving talks to young folks about the mistakes they made forces them to do serious soul-searching and has the benefit of helping others.  Playing big brother and basketball coach to inner-city youth is another great idea. 

The problem with community service is that it's tough to enforce if a person really doesn't want to do it.  There are so many ways to goldbrick, and I think it would need the threat of worse penalties behind it to have any teeth.

Realistically, fines will continue because the make the government money, while community service probably costs money to administer.

I'd be a lot more deterred by community service than by a fine.  That's because at this point in my life, I have more money than free time, so I'd much rather pay a fine, even of a few hundred dollars, than give up large blocks of scarce free time.

OTOH, younger people may make an opposite calculation.  They may have little money, have  a lot of time, and not mind giving some of it up.  That was my attitude when I was younger, toward the type of 'community service' I was sometimes assigned to in high school.

Also, a fine is not equally painful to everybody.  Logically, the pain of a fine is related to percentage of income, not a dollar amount.  Realistically, there is also the component of how much you enjoyed what earned you the fine.  I imagine you can relate to this -- that any given level of punishment hurts a lot less when you enjoyed the 'crime' than when you didn't [the reason I hate parking fines, but laugh at speeding fines].  In Finland, traffic fines (and maybe other fines as well) are tied to percentage of income, not a fixed dollar amount, but I don't see that as being in the cards for the US.

Still, I like your community service idea in concept.  My issues are only with the practicality of administering it.

[dazzleman]

A fine of $500 per half ounce, and jail time if more than 10 oz.

That filth has no place among decent people.

No one cares about your subjective preference, prude. 

It was my opinion, and I gave it, brain-damaged degenerate

Your opinion is hardly 'yours', worker - it is formed by your working-class experience.  You see drugs as a threat because you come from a poor community, where it is normal for drugs to be taken to emeliorate the miseries of oppression.  Conversely, drugs are used freely by your betters, with no ill effect.  Please, in future, Storebought, try to be more self-aware about the sources of your limited, simpleminded, intolerant, bourgeois morality.

Not that you are even worth wasting words upon, you hyena, but for the benefit of other people:

The San Francisco Chronicle ran an entire series of articles on the destructiveness that drugs played on profiled Bay Area residents, including, yes, rich people, who suffer as badly, physically, from the aftereffects as any other person. The worst drug of the lot was certainly crystal meth, but even that wasn't taken in isolation to others, including weed and alcohol.

I'm with you, Storebought.  Drugs are highly destructive to both rich and poor people.  Of course, richer people have more of a margin for error, and can afford better treatment, etc., so drug use sometimes doesn't end up affecting them as badly as poor people.  OTOH, it sometimes takes them from rich or comfortable to poor.  Drugs ruin many lives, and I applaud you for saying so.  Many people who think they don't do any damage are highly naive, or in the case of the previous poster, malicious.

[dazzleman]

I get embarrassed when I look at what I wrote just yesterday.

I think all drugs should be legalized.  Who are we to judge whether it's wrong to abandon your children, or steal from others to support a drug habit.  Most of the people that do these things are victims, and in any case, they steal mainly from the owning class.  If we had the type of redistribution that we should, there would be no need for them to steal.  So I can't really think that it's wrong.

And as far as parenting goes, there are only subjective ideas of what good parenting is.  The worst kind of family in any case is the highly repressive and sexist nuclear family.  Any alternative is better, so to the extent that drug use degrades the nuclear family, it is positive.

[dazzleman]

Assuming marijuana is illegal, what should be the punishment for possessing marijuana?

What they do in Singapore.

Caning?

I think murder.

Ah.  Well, that is an example of a true police state, opebo; the USA is simply police state-lite.

Well, at least they don't have hordes or repressive Christian fundamentalists there, as they have in the Bad Place.