Questions for the Free State Project People

[Luke S]

Actually, I do not believe that marijuana users should get jail.

Instead of jail, I believe that marijuana users should be sentenced to fines and community service.

And when they refuse to pay the fine or do the community service?

I'll second that question.

Well, the wall is being built on the southern border, so they will have to be bused from wherever they are to the southern border in order to do the community service. At the southern border, there will be camps set up for where they can sleep at night and eat food, and during the day they will do the community service, and this will go on until their sentence has been served, and then they will be bused back to wherever they originated from.

If they absolutely refuse to do the community service, as two of you brought up, then they will be bused back, their community service time will be converted into jail time, and they will receive additional jail time on top of that for noncompliance. So the short answer to your question is that if I were them I would do the smart thing and do the community service so they could get back to their lives quicker.

Same thing for the fines. If they don't pay, then their fine will be converted into jail time, using a conversion rate of $50 per day or something like that (I don't know how much it is in Ohio). And there could also be the possibility of additional jail time for noncompliance on top of that.

[Luke S]

Actually, I do not believe that marijuana users should get jail.

Instead of jail, I believe that marijuana users should be sentenced to fines and community service.

And when they refuse to pay the fine or do the community service?

If Luke doesn't believe in jailing marijuana users, maybe they can go to jail for not paying their fines.

Then if marijuana users don't want to go to jail, then they can be shot. 

No. If they don't want to go to jail at that point, then they will be taken to jail by force, just as is done with other lawbreakers who don't want to go to jail, but who have to go to jail.

[Caleb]

I've given you every benefit of the doubt imaginable.

I hope you change your mind. Violence begets violence. You not approving of something is not enough reason to use violence.

[Luke S]

Hey Luke,
Guess what, the federal government couldn't make marijuana possession illegal, constitutionally. The first federal laws against marijuana could only tax it into oblivion. They would have had to amend the constitution like they did to prohibit alcohol.

In fact the only thing the feds can do is regulate the interstate commerce of it. Check out what Clarence Thomas' opinion was in the Raich case before the supreme court... He said show me the commerce. The conservative position would be I can grow the herb in my own backyard and the feds would have no jurisdiction.

Yes, the feds would have no jurisdiction, but the fact is that state and local governments do.

[FTL_Ian]

Luke, how can you support violence being committed against your neighbors, friends, and family?  Don't you have a conscience?

Also, how is it your precious laws created an obligation on me to obey them in the first place?  Is it magic?

[JonM]

Hey Luke,
Guess what, the federal government couldn't make marijuana possession illegal, constitutionally. The first federal laws against marijuana could only tax it into oblivion. They would have had to amend the constitution like they did to prohibit alcohol.

In fact the only thing the feds can do is regulate the interstate commerce of it. Check out what Clarence Thomas' opinion was in the Raich case before the supreme court... He said show me the commerce. The conservative position would be I can grow the herb in my own backyard and the feds would have no jurisdiction.

Yes, the feds would have no jurisdiction, but the fact is that state and local governments do.

Go forth to http://leap.cc
There you can learn from law enforcement officers why the drug was is more harmful than drugs ever can hope to be and perhaps you will change your mind on it.

[dalebert]

Yes, the feds would have no jurisdiction, but the fact is that state and local governments do.

Oh they do? Why? Where does their authority come from? What is it that makes one person's judgment superior to another person's judgment?

[Luke S]

Luke, how can you support violence being committed against your neighbors, friends, and family?  Don't you have a conscience?

Also, how is it your precious laws created an obligation on me to obey them in the first place?  Is it magic?

First of all, I don't support violence in this situation. Fining them is not violence. Sentencing them to community service is not violence. If we were to go back to the old punishments used during the 1800's, such as whippings, then that would be violence. But that's not what we're doing, now is it.

Secondly, none of my family, friends, nor neighbors use pot or other illegal drugs. I know none of my family nor friends use it, and as for the neighbors, the police and college security totally cleaned up the pot situation in my college town 3 years ago when I was a freshman. (I actually helped them catch two people who were using it, including the guy who would hit people whenever he would smoke pot) There wasn't very much of it to begin with compared to other colleges' pot situations that I had heard about, and once the police decided to crack down on it, what little was left of it petered out or was confiscated, and the users who were caught had an example made of them (we never got the dealer, though, but he must have stopped because he saw the examples that were being made of the users), So now there is virtually no more pot here. So therefore the neighbors don't use it either.

[Luke S]

Hey Luke,
Guess what, the federal government couldn't make marijuana possession illegal, constitutionally. The first federal laws against marijuana could only tax it into oblivion. They would have had to amend the constitution like they did to prohibit alcohol.

In fact the only thing the feds can do is regulate the interstate commerce of it. Check out what Clarence Thomas' opinion was in the Raich case before the supreme court... He said show me the commerce. The conservative position would be I can grow the herb in my own backyard and the feds would have no jurisdiction.

Yes, the feds would have no jurisdiction, but the fact is that state and local governments do.

Go forth to http://leap.cc
There you can learn from law enforcement officers why the drug was is more harmful than drugs ever can hope to be and perhaps you will change your mind on it.

I don't care. The worst possible thing we could do is to wave the white flag and hand our country over to the drug criminals, like they did in the Netherlands.

Then we will have broken bottles all over the streets, trash all over the streets, people walking around naked, and our country will look like a great big version of the Netherlands.

And furthermore, what they are saying on that link is wrong. It is possible to get drugs out of communities. The community where I'm at right now is living proof of that. It's just that most police departments don't have the backbone to do what's necessary to get the drugs out of the communities, like the sheriff and his deputies here did.

[ReverendRyan]

I don't care. The worst possible thing we could do is to wave the white flag and hand our country over to the drug criminals, like they did in the Netherlands.

[Becky Thatcher]

Secondly, none of my family, friends, nor neighbors use pot or other illegal drugs.

  At least they are smart enough not to do it around you, your being a self-confessed narc and all...

[d_goddard]

Fining them is not violence.

You are very close to swallowing the Red Pill that many of us here did at one point or another.
And it hinges on the above incorrect statement.

Two questions.

Luke: if there were a $200 fine for owning a handgun, and I refused to pay it because I know it is both immoral and unconstitutional to restrict in any way my ability to own such a defensive weapon:
1) would my refusing to pay the fine be morally wrong, or morally just?
and
2) what would the State do after a few months, when my fine went unpaid?

[JonM]

Hey Luke,
Guess what, the federal government couldn't make marijuana possession illegal, constitutionally. The first federal laws against marijuana could only tax it into oblivion. They would have had to amend the constitution like they did to prohibit alcohol.

In fact the only thing the feds can do is regulate the interstate commerce of it. Check out what Clarence Thomas' opinion was in the Raich case before the supreme court... He said show me the commerce. The conservative position would be I can grow the herb in my own backyard and the feds would have no jurisdiction.

Yes, the feds would have no jurisdiction, but the fact is that state and local governments do.

Go forth to http://leap.cc
There you can learn from law enforcement officers why the drug was is more harmful than drugs ever can hope to be and perhaps you will change your mind on it.

I don't care. The worst possible thing we could do is to wave the white flag and hand our country over to the drug criminals, like they did in the Netherlands.

Then we will have broken bottles all over the streets, trash all over the streets, people walking around naked, and our country will look like a great big version of the Netherlands.

And furthermore, what they are saying on that link is wrong. It is possible to get drugs out of communities. The community where I'm at right now is living proof of that. It's just that most police departments don't have the backbone to do what's necessary to get the drugs out of the communities, like the sheriff and his deputies here did.

They can't keep drugs out of maximum security prisons, and that's what a full blown police state looks like.  You may think there are no drugs in your community, and perhaps there are none.  Of course, you might have a community full of people addicted to perscription drugs instead.

Drugs are a medical problem, making them a criminal issue gets us what we have today, drugs are more powerful, more readily available, and scumbags are getting rich off them.  Overdoses are more the result of poor quality control than anything else.  This is no different than Prohibition, and we will have no better success than we did then.

[Beth221]

Luke, there will be people walking around naked??

LOL

[Lloyd Danforth]

(I actually helped them catch two people who were using it, i.

I vote we kick this Asshole off of the forum