420 Warrior
Well-Known Member
Televangelist Pat Robertson has never been my go-to guy for proof that there is a God, but last week he made me believe in miracles.
The Virginia Beach-based Southern Baptist and public scold announced we should stop criminalizing marijuana and treat it like beverage alcohol because our endless war on drugs is bankrupting us, spiritually and financially.
"We here in America make up 5 percent of the world's population, but we make up 25 percent of jailed prisoners," Robertson said on a recent broadcast of The 700 Club.
"I became sort of a hero of the hippie culture, I guess, when I said I think we ought to decriminalize the possession of marijuana. I think it's just shocking how many of these young people wind up in prison and they get turned into hardcore criminals because they had possession of a very small amount of controlled substance. The whole thing is crazy."
Hallelujah - he had me at "hero of the hippie culture."
Tragically, he did undercut his credibility when he then blamed liberals for the country's skyrocketing incarceration rate.
"Every time the liberals pass a bill - I don't care what it involves - they stick criminal sanctions on it," Robertson clucked. "They don't feel there is any way people are going to keep a law unless they can put them in jail."
Liberals? Putting people in jail? For pot? Holy rollers - what is this man smoking?
I called The 700 Club headquarters to ask, but was only able to leave a message, which he didn't return. For now, I choose to believe he suffered a synaptic lapse and his 81-year-old brain inadvertently transposed "liberals" for "conservatives."
Robertson expanded on his marijuana position to The New York Times a few days after that broadcast:
"I really believe we should treat marijuana the way we treat beverage alcohol. ...This war on drugs just hasn't succeeded."
For Neill Franklin, Robertson's conversion could be a blessing. Franklin is a retired narcotics cop and executive director of LEAP, or Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, which seeks to legalize marijuana, for starters.
"The Christian population is finally seeing that this is a human rights issue with the number of people we're putting in prison for nonviolent ( drug offenses )," Franklin said in a phone interview Friday from Baltimore. "If you ... follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, you'll recognize immediately that this is immoral, what we're doing."
What we're doing is incarcerating 2.5 million fellow Americans - 62 percent of them for "soft" or nonviolent drug offenses. As one critic said, "We punish people we're not afraid of, but just mad at."
And we're paying for it, in every sense.
Harvard economist Jeffrey A. Miron claims in a recent report that legalizing drugs would save about $41.3 billion a year on enforcement. Of that, $25.7 billion would go to state and local governments, the rest to the federal government. Legalizing marijuana alone would save nearly $9 billion.
And if those drugs were taxed at rates comparable to alcohol and tobacco, Miron writes, it would yield $46.7 billion annually - $8.7 billion from marijuana.
But to Franklin - and, yes, to Robertson - the money is secondary. Try putting a price tag on the lives and entire families devastated, the futures wasted, because we lock people up for possession.
If we only invested in treatment and education instead of throwing tax dollars down the prison rat hole, we'd have a safer, saner and more productive society. Other countries have proven this.
We'd also quell the violence of the illegal marketplace - up to 70 percent of the profit for illegal drug cartels in Latin America comes from pot, Franklin notes.
As for the argument that legalizing pot or other drugs would only increase the population of addicts, he says, the addiction rate for drugs has held fairly steady at 1.3 percent of the population since the late 1800s.
Franklin says he's reaching out to Robertson about taking up the cause more publicly.
"By him openly having this conversation on his show, he's already put himself there," Franklin says. "And now he has a responsibility to follow up."
Robertson told the Times he supports efforts in Colorado and Washington to decriminalize pot, but won't campaign for the movement.
"I'm not a crusader," Robertson demurred.
Not a crusader? No, seriously, what has this man been smoking?
News Hawk - 420 Warrior 420 MAGAZINE
Location: Newport News,VA
Source: Daily Press
Author: Tamara Dietrich
Contact: letters@dailypress.com
Copyright: 2012 The Daily Press
Website: www.dailypress.com
The Virginia Beach-based Southern Baptist and public scold announced we should stop criminalizing marijuana and treat it like beverage alcohol because our endless war on drugs is bankrupting us, spiritually and financially.
"We here in America make up 5 percent of the world's population, but we make up 25 percent of jailed prisoners," Robertson said on a recent broadcast of The 700 Club.
"I became sort of a hero of the hippie culture, I guess, when I said I think we ought to decriminalize the possession of marijuana. I think it's just shocking how many of these young people wind up in prison and they get turned into hardcore criminals because they had possession of a very small amount of controlled substance. The whole thing is crazy."
Hallelujah - he had me at "hero of the hippie culture."
Tragically, he did undercut his credibility when he then blamed liberals for the country's skyrocketing incarceration rate.
"Every time the liberals pass a bill - I don't care what it involves - they stick criminal sanctions on it," Robertson clucked. "They don't feel there is any way people are going to keep a law unless they can put them in jail."
Liberals? Putting people in jail? For pot? Holy rollers - what is this man smoking?
I called The 700 Club headquarters to ask, but was only able to leave a message, which he didn't return. For now, I choose to believe he suffered a synaptic lapse and his 81-year-old brain inadvertently transposed "liberals" for "conservatives."
Robertson expanded on his marijuana position to The New York Times a few days after that broadcast:
"I really believe we should treat marijuana the way we treat beverage alcohol. ...This war on drugs just hasn't succeeded."
For Neill Franklin, Robertson's conversion could be a blessing. Franklin is a retired narcotics cop and executive director of LEAP, or Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, which seeks to legalize marijuana, for starters.
"The Christian population is finally seeing that this is a human rights issue with the number of people we're putting in prison for nonviolent ( drug offenses )," Franklin said in a phone interview Friday from Baltimore. "If you ... follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, you'll recognize immediately that this is immoral, what we're doing."
What we're doing is incarcerating 2.5 million fellow Americans - 62 percent of them for "soft" or nonviolent drug offenses. As one critic said, "We punish people we're not afraid of, but just mad at."
And we're paying for it, in every sense.
Harvard economist Jeffrey A. Miron claims in a recent report that legalizing drugs would save about $41.3 billion a year on enforcement. Of that, $25.7 billion would go to state and local governments, the rest to the federal government. Legalizing marijuana alone would save nearly $9 billion.
And if those drugs were taxed at rates comparable to alcohol and tobacco, Miron writes, it would yield $46.7 billion annually - $8.7 billion from marijuana.
But to Franklin - and, yes, to Robertson - the money is secondary. Try putting a price tag on the lives and entire families devastated, the futures wasted, because we lock people up for possession.
If we only invested in treatment and education instead of throwing tax dollars down the prison rat hole, we'd have a safer, saner and more productive society. Other countries have proven this.
We'd also quell the violence of the illegal marketplace - up to 70 percent of the profit for illegal drug cartels in Latin America comes from pot, Franklin notes.
As for the argument that legalizing pot or other drugs would only increase the population of addicts, he says, the addiction rate for drugs has held fairly steady at 1.3 percent of the population since the late 1800s.
Franklin says he's reaching out to Robertson about taking up the cause more publicly.
"By him openly having this conversation on his show, he's already put himself there," Franklin says. "And now he has a responsibility to follow up."
Robertson told the Times he supports efforts in Colorado and Washington to decriminalize pot, but won't campaign for the movement.
"I'm not a crusader," Robertson demurred.
Not a crusader? No, seriously, what has this man been smoking?
News Hawk - 420 Warrior 420 MAGAZINE
Location: Newport News,VA
Source: Daily Press
Author: Tamara Dietrich
Contact: letters@dailypress.com
Copyright: 2012 The Daily Press
Website: www.dailypress.com
