[UA] One Kilo of Cocaine

[Gregory Paul Stolze]

At 06:49 PM 11/17/2000 GMT, you wrote:
>Talking about laws and drugs, I've heard many times that (quote)
>"drugs users do more time than rapists, childs molesters and
>murderers" in the Land of the Free. Can anyone infirm/confirm this,
>or give me some information about that?

I can't concretely confirm, but if you mean "all drug users combined do
more time than all rapists, child molesters and murderers combined" in the
USA, I wouldn't be surprised if that was true.  There are several reasons I
believe this is plausible.

1) A lot more people do illicit drugs of one stripe or another than kill,
rape or molest.  I'm sure I know a dozen people who've blazed a doobie at
one time or another, but I'd be shocked to find out a close associate has
deliberately killed or comitted a sex crime.  (Wait a minute.  I probably
know people who were involved a shooting war at some point... but anyway,
no one who's killed outside a combat context.)  So already, there's a much
larger pool of offenders.  If the averae pot smoker gets a year and the
average rape-o gets ten years, you only need a 10 to 1 ratio to offset the
difference.  I'm sure the proportion is higher.

2) I suspect that drug convictions can be easier to get than convicitons
for other crimes, given the evidence remaining in the accused's body.

3) Most dammingly, there are mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes.
Here in Chicago, a man and woman who beat, bit and killed their child each
served (IIRC) less than six months apiece.  No one caught with an
"intention to distribute" quantity of marijuana would find loopholes like
they did.

America is hysterical over drugs, even though (1) our current president
experimented with the ganja, (2) one of the two presidential contenders
admits to smoking weed and (3) the OTHER presidential contender refuses to
answer any questions at all about alleged cocaine use in his youth.  Both
candidates are, of course, rabidly in favor of the kinds of laws that would
have put THEM in jail for years, if they'd been caught during their period
of "youthful indiscretion."

-G.

P.S.  Don't forget the current American vogue for capital punishment,
either.  Lots of killers don't serve more than ten years because that's how
long it takes to hustle them through Death Row.  For whites it takes
longer, of course.  

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