Comment by DanielBMarkham | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DanielBMarkham | Hacker News Reader

I'm a libertarian, so I'm already sold on legalization. Count me in.

As such, hopefully I can quibble with the text a bit.

"Ceasing this hypocritical practice by releasing nonviolent offenders is morally urgent."

Yeah, not so much. Yes, there is a severe moral problem here, but please do not make moral arguments! It's folks with moral arguments riding around on high horses that got us into this mess. Instead, argue from the standpoint of practicality (which she does).

One of the practicality arguments she does not make, which deserves mentioning, is that because the drug war is unwinnable, there are too many laws. This makes folks with the power of selective enforcement lords over the rest of us.

Have a traffic stop? Cops ask to search your car? You have a right to say "no". But if you do, be prepared to wait around until the drug dog shows up. He'll sniff around your car and "alert" the cops, even if there's no drugs present. Then, guess what? They get to tear apart your car while you watch. All because of the war on drugs.

Let's say you are a drug user. You have a joint in the ashtray. In this case, it gets even better. Then -- if I'm not mistaken -- they get to take your car! A few dollars worth of illegal pot, which might not even be yours, and you could lose tens of thousands of dollars worth of car.

It's not that this is morally outrageous. It certainly is. It's that a system of justice cannot maintain the consent of the governed when it turns LE officers into something approaching highway bandits. Selective enforcement of drug laws -- both by cops and prosecutors -- distorts the legal system so much as to make it unworkable. Sure, it's bad, but the bigger point is that it cannot continue working in this fashion. Something's gotta give.

I liked the article. It's good to see public discourse slowly become much more reasonable about drug addiction and its consequences. One caution, though: in my opinion what we need to do is still stay tough on violent, hardened criminals while being more pragmatic about drug crimes. Otherwise we'll end up being slandered as soft-headed and irrational.

I generally agree with your major thesis which is that the laws need to be consistent and fair. Clearly the majority of Americans see no harm in an occasional toke, and the majority indeed have tried MJ. That in itself argues MJ should be made legal.

The one argument that the police might make against legalization is that it deprives them of a useful tool -- an immoral tool, but nonetheless vital -- for getting scumbags off the street.

Example: The cops stop a guy who they basically know committed a murder or a rape or some other violent crime, but they don't have the evidence to hold him. He'd call his lawyer, the lawyer would come in and make sure he's held for no more than the maximum number of hours, then he'd be freed and nothing gained by anyone. But if they can nail him on possession, they at least can get him off the streets for some days, weeks, or months, while they gather the evidence to really put him away.

Not really the spirit of the law, but it works. That said, I'd rather we focus more resources on the few sociopaths and violent types out there, and clear out the over-crowded prisons.

They do this already with tax evasion laws or they just keep throwing charges at gangsters to get them off the streets, like here where they use confidential informants to claim somebody did something then lock them up for years pending trial which is later dismissed. They also bust them on petty driving infractions all the time then wait for them to pay with unlaundered money, which opens the tax evasion case. When police and the state want to make your life hell they can easily do that without drug charges.

The real problem with the black market is it's wide open to robbery. Criminals can't do armed escorts for their product and cash or turn to police for protection so they get violently jacked by anybody with a gun. There's no insurance or legal recourse so their only method of compensation is more violence. Nobody jacks beer trucks anymore because the operator can phone police making such a robbery too risky, and they have insurance, so the beer company doesn't have to seek compensation by shooting up their rivals company.

As it stands right now the first thing a violent felon does upon release is rob a drug delivery driver, the black market is their ATM.

I have a few additional points to add.

The SCotUS has ruled that a cop cannot detain you at a traffic stop solely for the purpose of getting a dog to sniff your car. You can only be held for an amount of time reasonable to investigate the offense for which you were stopped, or any other offense that became obvious as a result of the stop.

It does not take 30 minutes to issue a speeding ticket, so if you are stopped for speeding and held 30 minutes until a K-9 shows up to hit on your car, that search is unconstitutional.

This may be why cops have, via extensive self-training, willed their noses into being able to smell things that ordinary people, dogs, and electronic noses cannot detect. When you roll down your window at the traffic stop to hand over license, insurance, and registration, the investigating officer says (for the benefit of his bodycam or dashcam), "I smell alcohol," or "I smell marijuana."

Then they search your car anyway. They do not, for some strange reason, fill several mylar balloons with the air from the inside of your car, and process them as evidence, so that they could possibly be independently tested for those telltale odors later.

They don't even need to find a joint in your ashtray. They could just seize your car on suspicion, without ever charging you with a crime. As forfeiture is an in rem proceeding against the car itself, and the car is not a person, it has no presumption of innocence. You then have to prove not only that you have power of attorney to appear in court for your car, but also prove its innocence from a presumption of guilt.

As long as cops can take that "mucho dinero in the trucky-trailer" with impunity, the forfeiture system will continue to grow more corrupt.

"I do not consent to searches or seizures. I will not respond to questions without legal counsel. Am I free to go?"

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