Warbler said:
Mrebo said:
You seem way too comfortable with ruining people's lives for a violation of federal law. There are so many laws out there that the government could ruin your life, if not make it utterly miserable, if it so chose. That's not okay.
if you don't like a law change it. At least with federal law you only have repeal it once, not 50 times.
Change takes time, you know that. And it is hard to vote to change laws when you are in prison for the next twenty thanks to your decision to sale some pot at the age of 19. And even harder to change them since they revoked your right to vote.
Can you really not see how this is a bit of a pit these people are thrown into?
What would you think of someone saying, "If you don't like a law, change it!" To African Americans back before the Civil War? How were they suppose to change it, they didn't have a right to vote, they weren't part of the democracy. There are a lot of us trying to change this law, and have been fighting to do so for a long time. But there are also a lot of fathers in prison and a lot of babies who won't know their fathers until they are well into adulthood just because their fathers were selling a plant, something that grow naturally on this planet, doesn't cause any long term damage, and is far less dangerous than alcohol. And now he spends 20+ years of his life in prison. Dumb ass mistake as a 18 year old? You might be 38 years old before you get to go resume your life where your left it off at 18. Your two year old daughter might be 22 now, having had to live her life without a dad, because of something dumb he did while still a teenager. Oh yeah, and now this hypothetical figure, who has far too many real life counter-parts, is a felon now too, so his right to vote and have a say is long gone.
Put twenty years into perspective in your own life, what were you doing in your life twenty years ago? I was eight, and probably playing with Star Wars figures. That feels like lifetimes ago, I've achieved so much since then. I've failed at so much since then, and have had those failures to learn from and grow from. Imagine being stuck on the same dumb decision you made twenty years ago every day of your life, and having no opportunities to learn from father mistakes, to grow and mature. Imagine just beginning to try to enter society at the age of forty. Most of us get to do that together collectively with other young adults who are going through the same awkward process.
20+ years in prison. You're robbing someone of one third to a quarter of their life, if they go on to live an average life span; as well as robbing them of their most informative and adaptive years, based on the average age of a first time offender who winds up in prison.
The punishments don't fit the crime. And it is a crime that shouldn't be a crime to start. We imprison a massive percentage of our population in comparison to other countries, even the countries with the most draconian and unjust legal systems. We pay to support these prisoner with our tax dollars, we feed them and sustain them for large fractions of their entire lives, just because they were selling some dumb plant containing a chemical our brains have natural receptors for.
If a God made us, it is interesting he gave us special receptors in our brain THC. Maybe that means he is totally cool with us using it. Meanwhile, getting drunk involves flooding your liver with a chemical to a point that it can't filter it out anymore, allowing it to flow into your blood stream and be distributed to your brain, which your liver has the duty of filtering out harmful poisons to protect. Getting drunk is basically overloading your system with a harmful poison so that it can get to your brain and start harming it, which incidentally, can feel pretty awesome and be a lot of fun at times.
It just doesn't make sense that one should be totally legal, while the peddling or possession of the other should land you in prison for a significant quantity of your life. And ironically it is the more dangerous, physically and mentally harmful, and addictive of the two that is totally legal and socially accepted.
I'd say when two people that love each other are kept by law from marrying, that could be said to ruin their lives. Yet you have no problem with that.
Well, at least those two still get to see each other as often as they want, converse with one another regularly, hold hands, screw, etc. You know, all those sort of silly things couples enjoy doing with each other.
I'd say it ruins your life a good deal more when you are forced to live in a box far away from your family and those who care about you for 5 to 20 or more years of your short life.
