Conservative Judge: the most harmful thing about marijuana is jail.

Judge James P. Gray is a trial Judge in Orange County, California, a former attorney in the Navy JAG corps, a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles; he has also been a civil litigation attorney for a private law firm. In these two videos, he talks about marijuana and our "failed and hopeless drug policy" in America. According to Gray, it's easier for kids to get marijuana than alcohol because alcohol is regulated by the government and marijuana is regulated by drug dealers on the street. These are excellent videos, caused by a thoughtful judge who is in a position to know. If we started treating marijuana as we do alcohol, we would see five immediate benefits:

California would save $1 Billion in state expenses currently used to prosecute marijuana offenses.

California would generate $1.3B in take revenue per year in California (marijuana is currently the number one cash crop in California, with grapes being #2).

We'd make marijuana less available than it is now, and the quality of marijuana would be better regulated than it is now.

The entire medical marijuana controversy would go away--the Federal government is currently acting like a "bully" harassing sick people.

The hemp industry is a viable industrial crop, more valuable than cotton. You can get more paper from an acre of hemp than an acre of trees, and it's much more environmentally friendly. The diesel engine was originally designed to run on hemp. The sails of the ship "Old Ironsides," The U.S. Constitution were made of hemp fibers. The original copy of the founding document, the U.S. Constitution was made of hemp. It is an extremely valuable crop that we fail to exploit.
. Why don't we treat marijuana like alcohol, even though the majority of people are willing to do this? Why does the federal government care? Here's Judge Gray's belief: At least 75% of everyone in the U.S. who uses any illicit substance uses only marijuana. By legalizing and regulating marijuana, the federal government would no longer justify our "colossal prison-industrial complex." Many government jobs depend on the "war on drugs." Two Congressmen have admitted to Judge Gray that "the war on drugs is not winnable, but it's imminently fund-able." He concludes that the federal government is "addicted to the drug war funding." For more on the harmlessness of marijuana, see this earlier DI post. These videos were produced by Lee Stranahan, a writer, photographer and independent filmmaker. He also blogs for The Huffington Post .

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Maher, Rushdie, Hitchens and Mos Def have an honest conversation about marijuana

Maher and guests (Salman Rushdie, Christopher Hitchens and Mos Def) had an honest conversation about marijuana, politics and prohibition. Compare this honesty to Obama's recent concocted statement, which was carefully designed to keep him safe from Republican character attacks. This topic of the legalization of marijuana needs more honest discussion, or else we will continue tossing 800,000 victimless "criminals" into the justice system every year. I'm not promoting the use of marijuana or any other mind-altering drug; I would prefer that everyone stay sober and naturally high on life. The current system is insanity, however, and I don't see any hope for the honest public conversations we need to have. On a related note, Huffpo reports that the violent big-time sellers of illegal drugs are thrilled to hear that we are going to continue our violence-inducing and generally counter-productive "drug war":

Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera, reported head of the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico, ranked 701st on Forbes' yearly report of the wealthiest men alive, and worth an estimated $1 billion, today officially thanked United States politicians for making sure that drugs remain illegal. According to one of his closest confidants, he said, "I couldn't have gotten so stinking rich without George Bush, George Bush Jr., Ronald Reagan, even El Presidente Obama, none of them have the cajones to stand up to all the big money that wants to keep this stuff illegal. From the bottom of my heart, I want to say, Gracias amigos, I owe my whole empire to you."

Continue ReadingMaher, Rushdie, Hitchens and Mos Def have an honest conversation about marijuana

Jim Webb’s heroic speech on the need for prison reform

In reading Glenn Greenwald's column at Salon, I learned the extent to which Senator Jim Webb has heroically spoken out on the need for prison reform. Webb certainly hits the nail on the head. Our current prison system is dehumanizing and it drains the public treasury. We can do much much better. Here are Webb's words:

Let's start with a premise that I don't think a lot of Americans are aware of. We have 5% of the world's population; we have 25% of the world's known prison population. We have an incarceration rate in the United States, the world's greatest democracy, that is five times as high as the average incarceration rate of the rest of the world. There are only two possibilities here: either we have the most evil people on earth living in the United States; or we are doing something dramatically wrong in terms of how we approach the issue of criminal justice. . . .

The elephant in the bedroom in many discussions on the criminal justice system is the sharp increase in drug incarceration over the past three decades. In 1980, we had 41,000 drug offenders in prison; today we have more than 500,000, an increase of 1,200%. The blue disks represent the numbers in 1980; the red disks represent the numbers in 2007 and a significant percentage of those incarcerated are for possession or nonviolent offenses stemming from drug addiction and those sorts of related behavioral issues. . . .

In many cases these issues involve people’s ability to have proper counsel and other issues, but there are stunning statistics with respect to drugs that we all must come to terms with. African-Americans are about 12% of our population; contrary to a lot of thought and rhetoric, their drug use rate in terms of frequent drug use rate is about the same as all other elements of our society, about 14%. But they end up being 37% of those arrested on drug charges, 59% of those convicted, and 74% of those sentenced to prison by the numbers that have been provided by us. . . .

Another piece of this issue that I hope we will address with this National Criminal Justice Commission is what happens inside our prisons. . . . We also have a situation in this country with respect to prison violence and sexual victimization that is off the charts and we must get our arms around this problem. We also have many people in our prisons who are among what are called the criminally ill, many suffering from hepatitis and HIV who are not getting the sorts of treatment they deserve.

Importantly, what are we going to do about drug policy - the whole area of drug policy in this country?

And how does that affect sentencing procedures and other alternatives that we might look at?

Greenwald picks up where Webb's quote (above) stops. This is a critical issue that needs immediate attention, for all of our good. We can do a lot better than arguing to lock up all the "bad" guys but then defining the "bad" guys simplistically and then making it all worse with the way we treat those "bad" guys.

Continue ReadingJim Webb’s heroic speech on the need for prison reform

Prison reform on the radar

New story from The Raw Story:

"America's criminal justice system has deteriorated to the point that it is a national disgrace," [Senator Jim] Webb said, noting that the United States has five percent of the world's population but 25 percent of the world's prisoners.

According to a document released by Sen. Webb's office, "Its task will be to propose concrete, wide-ranging reforms to responsibly reduce the overall incarceration rate; improve federal and local responses to international and domestic gang violence; restructure our approach to drug policy; improve the treatment of mental illness; improve prison administration, and establish a system for reintegrating ex-offenders."

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Here’s what often happens when you try to videotape police.

Here's what often happens when you videotape police. The priest who tried to videotape this incident eventually got his camera back, which is more than you can say for many other folks who have tried to photograph law enforcement officers in public places. Here's a related post dealing with threats of arrest for taking photos in public places. And be careful when you consider blogging about your First Amendment rights, especially when arrogant judges get wind of it.

Continue ReadingHere’s what often happens when you try to videotape police.