Pubdate: Thu, 15 Nov 2012
Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)
Copyright: 2012 The Globe and Mail Company
Contact:  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/168
Author: Marc Emery
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v12/n582/a06.html

IT WON'T WORK

The new mandatory minimum sentences will do the opposite of what
Stephen Harper says is the intention (Worries Grow Over Stiffer Drug
Sentences - Nov. 13).

In the U.S., where I am incarcerated for five years for selling seeds
from my desk in Vancouver, hundreds of prisoners have been sentenced
to 20 years to life without parole for drugs. A man in my unit was
sentenced to life without parole for 99 grams of crack cocaine. It's
costing U.S. taxpayers millions of dollars to imprison him for 40 to
60 years. Yet, others will fight over the area where he used to sell
crack.

No amount of imprisonment or penalties stops the drug trade. The U.S.
has more than 3,200 gangs; many countries in South and Central America
and West Africa are destabilized by cartels that drug wars and
prohibition create.

The new harsher mandatory minimum sentences for as few as six
marijuana plants are part of legislation called the Safe Streets and
Communities Act.

The real answer to drug use and safe streets is transparency -
acknowledging the human reality that people want drugs, that a just
society makes these available in regulated, taxed and controlled
circumstances without letting organized crime fulfill this inevitable
human desire. Prohibition is a wretched formula for destroying
societies and hurting all the citizens in them.

Marc Emery, 40252086, Yazoo Federal Prison, Yazoo City, Miss.
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MAP posted-by: Matt