[mtalantikite]

The point here is that there are more consequences when you're Black in the US. Statistically speaking people of color, and in particular Black Americans, are arrested and convicted of marijuana related crimes at a much higher rate than any other group [1]. That translates into Black Americans being kept out of the newly legal business because of racist policing policies.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/06/04/the-b...

[greenisland]

I appreciate your remarks. But -- what I'm saying is that no one should feel sorry for this guy. It pains me to see the vast numbers of Americans who but a few years ago were for tough legislation and tough policies and who now desire to see criminals released from prison because the sentence may be too harsh. Really? If you do the crime, you do the time. We should not undo sentencing. It was all done legally at the time and it should stand.

I don't like the dope industry. It attracts children who think that smoking marijuana is harmless. It's not. The dopeheads can trot out all the industry-inspired crap they like, but it's not healthy. I'm all for ACTUAL medical patients who are in severe pain using it, but so many go to these quack doctors who will give a medical reason for a few dollars. Actual doctors with hospital admitting privileges should be the law.

Marijuana is not harmless and just a few years ago the majority of Americans agreed. The morality in America has slipped precipitously since our heyday as a nation in the 1950s.

[wf]

>The morality in America has slipped precipitously since our heyday as a nation in the 1950s.

Yea, the 1950's were really America's heyday (/s), while the rest of the world was blown up. I wonder if people in the 1920's were sipping on illegal booze at Gadsby's party thinking "man, the morality in america sure has taken a dive since the gilded age". Is your view so skewed by the media portrayal of the Jones' and white picket fences that you think America was some bastion of morality then? The morals established then were that woman couldn't own credit cards unless their husbands deemed it so, gays should be sent to sanitoriums to prevent the spread of their disease by showing nude pictures to other boys (Lavender Scare anyone?); it took 10+ years for some states to comply with Brown v The Board of Education. So how about you get your kids a history book and let them read that so they don't have to see the world through rose colored bigoted glasses.

edit. The more I think about this the more upset I am. HUAC, being able to LEGALLY beat your wife, this isn't even touching on African-American trials of the time. America was a fucking mess in the 1950's.

[rfrank]

> The morality in America has slipped precipitously since our heyday as a nation in the 1950s.

oh man

[drunken-serval]

Only because beating blacks and wives was considered moral behavior in the 1950s.

[EdHominem]

No, that's precisely backwards.

We changed the law because we thought it had been incorrect. Any convictions from an incorrect law are obvious an error, not a feature.