Pubdate: Sat, 26 Jul 2014
Source: Chico Enterprise-Record (CA)
Copyright: 2014 Chico Enterprise-Record
Contact:  http://www.chicoer.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/861
Note: Letters from newspaper's circulation area receive publishing priority
Author: Garry Cooper

THOSE CONVICTED OF DRUG CRIMES NEEDLESSLY BRANDED

Ask yourselves how much sense this makes and how much good this does 
for our society.

Millions of young people are being convicted of drug felonies in our 
country. They are then excluded from federal financial aid for 
college, cannot join the military, are excluded from most government 
employment, and they wear this brand of being a felon for the rest of 
their lives, which devastates their employment in private industry for life.

These people often turn their lives around but struggle to make a 
decent living and struggle even more if they marry and have families. 
They often find themselves with car problems, behind on rent, needing 
school clothes or needing birthday presents for their kids like 
everyone else. They have but one way to earn good money and that is 
to sell drugs. What do you expect them to do? The law 
enforcement/prison industry expects them to re-offend and continue 
contributing to their lucrative industry that they have carefully 
crafted for themselves by buying influence to place such 
counter-productive (to society) laws on the books from our 
ever-so-ready-to prostitute themselves politicians.

In some communities, such as Detroit and Florida, 70 percent of the 
black men between the ages of 18 and 30 are in this class and in 
Florida, they are not allowed to vote to change these modern Jim Crow laws.

Drug felons, which are our children, deserve a clean slate and a 
chance, and our society deserves better treatment than what is 
afforded us by the police/prison unions.

- - Garry Cooper, Durham
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom