Did Rep. Andy Harris inadvertently legalize marijuana possession in D.C.?

[Uncle Joe]

13. "What's to become of me!?"

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/24318-a-bitter-harvest-california-marijuana-and-the-new-jim-crow

Michelle Alexander: And this young man comes into my office; I'm spending my afternoon interviewing one young black man after another who's been stopped, searched - for no apparent reason other than race. He has documented a pattern of stops and searches that he's experienced over a period of nine months, with extraordinary detail. And on top of that, he was a good-looking young man. He was well-spoken and charismatic, and I thought to myself, "This is my dream plaintiff. This is the one we've been waiting for." And so I'm talking to him, getting all excited. Then he says something that has me pause, and I say "Wait, did you just say you're a felon? A drug felon?" And he gets quiet. And I just say, "You know what, I'm sorry we can't represent you if you have a felony." And he says to me, "You're no better than the police! The minute I tell you I'm a felon you just stop listening, you can't even hear what I have to say." He says "What's to become of me? I can't get a job. I'm living in my grandma's basement right now, 'cause nowhere else will take me in. I can't even take care of myself as I man. I can't even get food stamps today. What's to become of me? What's to become . . . " He says, "Good luck trying to find one young black man in my neighborhood they haven't gotten to yet. They've gotten to us already."

(snip)

The US incarcerates human beings at a rate unprecedented in world history, and its primary instrument has been the "war on drugs." Since the drug war began, while crime rates have fluctuated, sometimes up, sometimes down, the rate of incarceration has steadily and steeply climbed. Approximately half a million people are in prison or jail for a drug offense today, as compared to 40 some thousand in 1980. That's an increase of 1100 percent. Since the drug war began, over 31 million people have been arrested for drug offenses.

(snip)

But, as the color of drug criminality became defined as black and brown, the prison boom that has come hand in hand with the war on drugs has been characterized by an atrocious degree of racial disparity. While the majority of illegal drug users and dealers nationwide are white, three-fourths of all people imprisoned for drug offenses have been black or Latino. In the year 2000, prison admissions for whites was 8 times the number it had been in 1983. But for blacks during the same period, the rate of prison admissions increased by a factor of 26.

One of the principle myths undergirding the drug war is that it is war to root out the most violent offenders. This is simply not the case as the vast majority of arrests have been for simple possession, mostly of marijuana. Across the nation, law enforcement agencies have been financially rewarded with federal dollars in proportion to the sheer numbers they have ushered into the criminal justice system. And the crackdown has occurred almost exclusively in poor communities of color, where literally millions of individuals have suffered, both in prison and upon release with the felon label firmly attached.

The so called War on Drugs is corrupt, immoral, racist, stupid and is rotting our nation from the inside out.

If anything should be illegal it's prisons that profit for incarcerating the American People!

Thanks for the link, malaise.