Or - New Republican Georgia Governor 'soft on crime'
Republicans are to blame for so many of our needless modern ills and their multi-generational jihad against 'mara-ju-wanna' (I always spell it like these mouthbreathers say it)
Now our new rightwinger governor, Nathal Deal, a man so corrupt I am expecting to see him arrested for financial fraud before his term expires, has come out in support of reviewing 'drug laws'
This isn't as progressive as it might seem.
"Presently, one out of every 13 Georgia residents is under some form of correctional control," Gov. Nathan Deal, a Republican, told state lawmakers during his inaugural address. "It cost about $3 million per day to operate our Department of Corrections. And yet, every day criminals continue to inflict violence on our citizens and an alarming number of perpetrators are juveniles."
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"As a State, we cannot afford to have so many of our citizens waste their lives because of addictions," he said. "It is draining our State Treasury and depleting our workforce."
This does, on the surface, look like 'common sensey kind of stuff' but he's a republican and one should NEVER get their hopes up on anything they say that seems...progressive or, worse, what I think is correct.
The key giveaway is the focus on "drug addiction". Drug addiction is a big deal, so far as REAL drugs go. Well, technically, only a few drugs are genuinely "addicting": tobacco, heroin/opiates, benzodiazipines, and alcohol. Cocaine, crack, speed/meth are 'habit-forming', not true addicition.
With REAL addiction you get SICK from attempts to stop using the substance (ask a tobacco smoker).
With habit-forming drugs, you'll ne technically miserable but you'll not get sick an you'll not be at risk of death. You'll be fine, just unhappy. Boo-fucking hoo. You'll live.
Marijuana is habit-forming, NOT addictive. If you run out, you'll be out. Nothing bad will happen to you.
Deal's statement focuses on 'drug addiction' and as anti-marijuana propaganda works, marijuana is NEVER mentioned any more than necessary - it is always replaced by the nebulous term "drugs" to scare people and damage the Public Discourse (as republicans are wont to do).
Roughly 19 percent of Georgia's prison population was incarcerated on drug offenses in 2009, according to a report (PDF) by the Office on National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP).
Nationally, nearly half of all arrests are due to laws criminalizing the cultivation, sales and use of cannabis, which has been shown to be less damaging to human health than alcohol or tobacco. Over 872,000 Americans were arrested for the drug in 2007, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigations. Nearly three fourths of those arrested were under the age of 30.
The ONDCP is a federal level and federally funded orifice of anti-marijuana lies and should NEVER be taken seriously, they are quoted as saying the #1 growing drugs of abuse are prescription drugs, something I have seen consistent reports on now for several years.
The FBI numbers are a lot more reliable - HALF of the money that you pay for law enforcement is BLOWN on arresting marijuana touchers: the law is about "possession' - touching or being near the weed, not about smoking it or being 'high. It's ALL about touching the Herb and HALF of all law enforcement activity is about chasing marijuana touchers, most of whom are good people, not menaces to society.
Deal talks about wanting to free up prison space for real criminals and I imagine most people reading this would heartily agree. But he will not want to venture into any sort of decriminalization attempt - he'll want to send marijuana smokers to "treatment of their addiction' which, of course, doesn't exist.
So this will LIKELY have the potential to become more of a re-education initiative, using the power of the court to force pot smokers to go to re-education classes and accept propaganda as reality before they can be off the hook. And, as republicans are good at, it will likely funnel public funds to GOP_aligned providers of 'drug addiction treatment' just as most drug testing is done by corporations that donate most of their money to republicans. (Nope - no stats, just certain this is true. Looking forward to being told otherwise)
I don't know this for sure; I'll call it 'educated speculation', but I see it as easily within the realm of the republican jihad against this useful plant.Repubs are NOT known for making decisions to help the common person.
And, thus, you can hardly go wrong expecting a 'raw deal' from republicans.