Fixing the weed laws
It occurs to me that perhapos the most effective way to get marajuana decriminalized would be to convince every single smoker to turn themselves in.
I know, all y’all out there in Sheer’s-journal land are saying ‘what, are you nuts’? But consider the statistics – 83 million americans admit to having smoked weed – one in twenty smokes it on a regular basis.
Is there jail capacity for one out of every twenty americans? It seems pretty tanj unlikely. Is there booking capacity to cope with the inrush if every weed smoker in the U.S. went to their local police station at the same time? Seems pretty unlikely. Could the court system cope with such a inrush? Seems very unlikely bordering on impossible.
So, basically what one does is to take advantage of the fact that our legal system doesn’t scale very well.
I don’t know wheter it would work or not – and I’d be interested to see comments on the matte r- but it does eem like it would cerrtainly make _something_ interesting happen. I mean, picture the lines at the police station..
August 18th, 2003 at 12:15 pm
1. the apathy of most humans… ie. getting people to care enough to make the effort… much less decide if it’s worth the risk… there are well publicized “smoke events”… hmms… maybe if you had one in a court house or something.. shrugs…
2. if you have a large group of people come into a police office and say “i smoke” I doubt much would happen.. unless the police percive the group as a threat.. then they would proly put them in the tank for disturbing the peace or something like that.. telling a cop you commited a crime doesn’t mean they will take action… proly just take a report… though I can see how this could become a “media event”
3. you underestimate a court’s ability to handle a large number of people… just like you sometimes have bulk judgements in traffic court… this is how I see a possible outcome:
Judge: “Those of you here to confess to smoking pot since x date (x date being the date whatever pot law went into effect) please rise… you’ve been charged with smoking pot since x date.. how do you plead”
Group: Guilty
Judge: “Wonderful, you are all fined $Z dollars and must do M hours of service. line up to see the clerk”
So.. as a media event.. yea it could be intresting.. beyond that, I think apathy is working very strongly against your vision…. though unemployment is working for it (ie. more people doing nothing but look for work need a beak right?)