Some basketball player named Corie Blount. Some 29 pounds of marijauna nabbed by the five-0.
Here's the thing, I don't follow sports. I don't particularly give a shit about sports or anything sports related (Mega Man Soccer notwithstanding). However, I was given THIS ARTICLE to read yesterday by a friend who only wanted to share it because, "I just liked the judge's comment."
Little did he know that I'd bounce up onto My soapbox.
That comment My friend enjoyed was, "Cheech and Chong would have had a hard time smoking that much." The judge's failed and altogether retarded attempt at humor and hipness aside, it's the attitude of the thing that set Me off. The knee-jerk trafficking charges. Yes, those chrages were dropped, but I don't believe they should have entered into the case in the first place, and really the only reason was due to the amount of marijauna involved.
Why is it that having over a specified amount of a substance automatically means you're selling it? Whatever the amount, it doesn't always necessarily mean it's "far too much for personal use and sharing with friends." I mean, if the defense was all, "yeah, that was for us all to smoke in a single sitting" then yeah, HORSE SHIT...but by the same token, when a mormon family fills up their three extra garage freezers with meat, they aren't automatically suspected of turkey trafficking. Okay, I know, filling your food stores is hardly an illegal action, and obviously isn't the same thing. However, it's not so much a question of what is being stockpiled, in My opinion, so much as why...the intent being ascribed to it by an otherwise uninvolved third-party. Stockpiling weed for an extended period of time in the interest of not having to go out and buy more sounds reasonable to me, regardless of the illegality of posession.
Don't get Me wrong, I'm not saying I suspect that to be the case...for all I know he was indeed planning to sell the shit. My point is simply concerned with "the amount isn't evidence of the intent." I'm fine with busting him on posession, he broke the damn law. But automatically charging him with intent? That's a little overboard. Pre-Crime, anyone?
I don't smoke weed and My opinion of people who do isn't exactly stellar...but I feel that the laws governing the posession and consumption of it are often ridiculous and unnecessary. Especially in the light of the comparable socially acceptable (yet significantly more dangerous) attitude regarding the consumption of alcohol.
