It’s a flower that makes people happy and hungry. God fucking damn it. There is no fucking reason to destroy people’s lives over this.
Two reason: Conservatism and Christianity.
I don’t even think that article adequately conveys how thoroughly racist the roots of it is. They don’t even quote the awful things Anslinger said to justify cannabis prohibition.
“There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos, and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz, and swing, result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and any others.”
“…the primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races.”
“Marijuana is an addictive drug which produces in its users insanity, criminality, and death.”
“Reefer makes darkies think they’re as good as white men.”
“Marihuana leads to pacifism and communist brainwashing”
“You smoke a joint and you’re likely to kill your brother.”
“Marijuana is the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind.”
https://fee.org/articles/the-racist-roots-of-marijuana-prohibition/
And then there’s this from Nixon staffer John Ehrlichman:
“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people,” former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman told Harper’s writer Dan Baum for the April cover story published Tuesday.
“You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities,” Ehrlichman said. “We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
Nobody has ever been able to explain to me how cannabis use is incompatible with Christianity in any way.
But then again, I don’t expect Christians to be consistent or logical about anything.
There’s one very good reason, according to authoritarians: slave labor. 'Murica.
Fuck Alabama and its bullshit ass laws
Alabama actually has medical cannabis now, maybe soon?
Alabama has plenty of problems outside of being able to smoke weed or not
For example choosing to imprison older people to what is effectively a life sentence for a non violent charge
Sorry, that was my point I tried to make. If they legalize to recreational, expunging convictions is a much bigger likelihood and maybe he will see freedom soon.
All good! Miscomms happen nbd to talk it out for me ☺️
Can they do Trump next?
They probably do have ‘Ass Laws’ on the books there
Code of Alabama Sec. 13A-6-64 - Sodomy in the Second Degree.
Includes consenting adults having oral and anal sex. But Alabama says they do not and will not prosecute people for it. Still on the books, though.
Lawyers fucking suck. They always have to play fucking games with unspoken language. Their full sentence is:
“do not and will not prosecute people for it…until the Comstock Act comes back into effect or the 14th Amendment no longer provides privacy protections.”
Lawyers would weasel us out of any and all rights just because it gives them more billable hours and more casework.
Overzealous legislators who make the laws and mandatory minimums suck first and foremost, then prosecutors and sentencing judges who do not use judicial discretion fairly and empathetically. Lots of lawyers are good people and it’s worth noting that civil rights are protected almost exclusively by lawyers.
Lawyers have no obligation to act with empathy. There is no obligation to act fairly - because they can always twist the definition of what “is” is. I can find a thousand examples of unfair judicial actions that legally wouldn’t be considered unfair.
Hell, Anthony Scalia said “mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.” How can that not be the definition of unfair - our SCoTUS ruled that it’s totally legal and fair to execute a factually innocent person.
Civil rights need protection primarily because of the lawyers trying to infringe on them.
The people of Alabama voted in an election (2014, I think) whether to keep or not the unenforceable law that forbids interracial marriage. More than 40% voted to keep it. Fuck them.
I don’t understand how 40 years of prison for a non-violent crime isn’t considered to be both “cruel” and “unusual”. It is objectively cruel. I certainly hope that it is also unusual. I certainly hope that there aren’t many more like him, imprisoned for decades for what amounts to personal-use levels of pot. 5.5 lbs of pot when you include the stem and roots isn’t that much and certainly sounds like a personal supply to me.
These people are kept in jail to be used in labor. It’s not about being cruel. It’s about making money in the cheapest way possible. Since Alabama is a hellhole with no workforce they turn to modern day slavery.
Oh it’s both. It’s definitely both, the cruelty and the slave labor, which is cruel in and of itself as well.
Yeah, when you read the article you see that the parole board has stopped issuing paroles almost entirely in the last couple of years. This is 100% about manufacturing cheap labor and keeping the oligarchy running smoothly.
It is the most cruel people in the world that hide behind a law book and the pretense of being fair and worse even: past cases.
But since you first have to study for a decade, then kiss ass for a decade or two before even beginning to qualify for ‘JUDGE’ it is not more as normal you will have lost ALL BONDS WITH REGULAR SOCIETY.
If you think 15$+tax+tip is fine for a glass of wine with lunch on a daily basis; you are NOTTTTTTT qualified to speak for the benefit of society : in contrary!
Yeah I think you’re mistaking what a Judges role is. It is merely to uphold the law. The problem in the US is that the role is so politicised that the idea they are legal experts rather than representatives of parties is being lost. They should be representative of society to an extent but ultimately the main qualification is legal experience.
The issue is the law itself and that comes back to the elected politicians in Alabama. It’s a problem of one party rule, and first past the post electoral system plus gerrymandering which means a stagnant political system dominated by one segment of society. The US increasingly looks like a it’s just a large collection of failed democracies.
You don’t specifically need representative judges. You need electoral reform so you have an actual representative democracy, and everything else comes from that.
The MAKING of the law favors the establishment. I say use the guillotine first, then new laws. Slave master still a slave master now, only the slaves believe they’re free
I’m stating it’s the WRONG ROLE law should NOT be upheld in the same way for poor and rich. For uneducated and the wise.
IT SHOULD NOT BE THE SAME favoring the poor and weak.
HOWEVER IT FAVORS THE EXACT OPOSITE.
That will teach m!
Removed by mod
Bullshit, reported for spreading false information.
there is no record of any previous arrests or charges for Leon Bud Hotchkiss in Alabama¹²³. He was a first-time offender when he was convicted of marijuana trafficking in 2013². He has maintained a clean institutional record since then².
Fucking trump supporters are the worst, you can’t get anything right.
https://www.al.com/live/2011/10/magnolia_springs_marijuana_house.html
Hotchkiss has a drug history and stated that he had been to federal prison on a drug conspiracy charge. He stated that the conspiracy case was about 20 years ago when he lived in Orange Beach, officials said.
Life sentence for growing some pot. Meanwhile the Jan 6th insurrectionists are getting maybe 2 years, or if you’re a card carrying proud boy terrorist you might be looking at up to 20 years.
Some guy beat someone so bad they need 24hr supervision, and he got 7 years. Cops get of with paid vacation for shooting or running over: dogs, unarmed adults and children, flash bang babies, drunk driving, beating their SO, planting drugs on innocent people. Did I miss anything?
War on drugs, no, it’s a war on personal freedoms.
There are actual recordings from the Nixon Whitehouse where they decided that since they could no longer legally discriminate against people based on race, they’d have to find another way and drugs was it.
A war specifically on Black and Hispanic personal freedoms, at least historically that’s how it began.
The weird outlier is a recent charge of a guy who assaulted 6 cops and got 5 years. A glitch in the system.
Here’s the actual law: https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?path=/prelim@title18/part1/chapter115&edition=prelim
Try to overthrow the government- 18 months. Grow plants- life sentence.
America (for the time being), fuck yeah!
This stuff just makes my blood boil. Those 3 assholes on the parole board are complete sociopaths. There’s absolutely no justice here.
Someday we’ll learn that these types of positions are only ever occupied by sociopaths, psychopaths, sadists, and those full of hate. Then we’ll realize that the institutions they are part of were designed by the same type of people. Then hopefully finally we’ll realize that every state institution was designed by this same group that believes they know the right way for everything and feel entitled to force their ways on everyone else.
Well, political positions, yes. But there are tons of government employees around the country that are just normal people working at a regulatory agency. The overwhelming majority of them. They’re just doing their job.
At least for now. SCOTUS is very close to changing that.
Right, there are many employees of the state with no power, these positions I’d expect are mostly not staffed by dark tetrad types. The DMV though, pretty sure that’s staffed by mostly sadists.
It’s actually a requirement I think.
In WA during lockdown, they requested compassionate release of someone who was paralyzed on half his body and confined to a chair. The DOC decided that he was a threat to society and needed to be kept in the COVID greenhouse.
usa fucking sucksssss especially the south
The United States is a fascist hellhole.
shitty country to live in
Alabama has an incredible climate for growing outdoor Cannabis, too…
It should literally be everywhere there.
a friend in highschool used to collect all the seeds and scatter them around town. de-seeding was part of the low-grade weed ritual. seeds would explode and blow-up your joints or bowls
Johnny Ganjaseed
The age of consent in Alabama is 16.
Let’s not act like we were expecting much from alabama.
It’s 16 in Minnesota and 17 in New York, but 18 in North Dakota. Let’s not act like a higher age of consent is directly tied to progressive policies.
Also, Washington state, a solidly blue state. But also, let’s not suggest being allowed to drive a death machine is less responsibility than having sex, drinking, or voting.
North Dakota used to be quite progressive historically, just going the other way fast in the last few decades.
I’m going to have to press (x) to doubt. They have voted republican in every election since 1964. The only time the Republican candidate has gotten less than 50% of the vote during those years was when Ross Perot was splitting the Republican vote.
Maybe if you’re going back past when the parties switched ideologies.
Fargo can be progressive, I know many of the bars there have historically been pretty LGBTQ friendly, but the rest of NoDak hasn’t as been progressive.
We have a state bank, mill, highly subsidized education system, legacy fund, one of the most progressive prison systems, etc. The state is still full of coops and unions Alot of this is left over from the NPL days. You need to go back further. We also had democrats in the house and senate for decades. You are looking way too superficially. Things are completely different now.
All? Some of that originated 60 years ago but is still going. The prison systems are newer, education subsidies are newer, the house and senate seats are newer, the legacy fund is newer…
All that was over 60 years ago. Double your original Few Decades comment. North Dakota has been conservative for quite some time now.
Although in 1920 the age of consent was 18 in both North Dakota and Minnesota, or we could go back to 1880 when the age of consent was 10 (so wrong) in both North Dakota and Minnesota. /jk
So those are more states I wouldn’t expect much from either but it doesn’t lessen the “ew” I feel for Alabama.
That’s a pretty common age of consent, or are you arguing that we should lock up like 40% of all teenagers?
Arguing?
Nah, I’m putting blame for backwards decisions on backwards states. Not here to argue with you ;]
Remember come election time who is responsible for this. Just like actions, elections have consequences.
Thats what you get when you dare to do gardening
art source : https://www.artstation.com/artwork/g2Z8Ke
Didn’t return your grocery cart? Straight to jail.
Growing plants Alabama?
Straight to jail!
Drive too fast? Straight to jail
Drive too slow? Also jail.
?
?
What does your question even imply?
