Marijuana Community: Gary Johnson on Legalizing Marijuana

Source:FreeState Now

Why do we have two-million people in prison in America, the largest Prison Population in the World. At least on a per-capita basis, because we lock up people and send them to prison who don't represent a threat to society. We lock up people for what they do to themselves. We lock up people for what they do to themselves rather than what they do to others. In other words the 'War on Drugs' in America is at fault for our huge prison population. We are a liberal democracy and I'm a Liberal Democrat whois  proud to live in this liberal democracy. But of course we are not a perfect liberal democracy.

And for one we lock up people for what they do to themselves as well as what they do to others. Of course we should lock up people when they harm innocent people. But not when they hurt themselves and this is something Gary Johnson who describes his politics as classical liberal who is running for President in the Republican Party, but you wouldn't know that. Because he's only been allowed to appear at one presidential debate. Understands he understands this because he was Governor of New Mexico which of course borders Mexico. They actually have about a thousand-mile border with Mexico and have their own drug issues as a result of Mexico.

But Johnson did as Governor of Mexico was very smart and clever and forward-thinking. He pardoned marijuana users who weren't violent offenders, who didn't have a bad record in prison. That alone brings down your prison population and allows you to use that prison space for violent offenders instead. And New Mexico has a organized gang problem and this helped them with that. This is what I would do. Pardon all non-violent marijuana users who are in United States prisons who have solid records in prison. Perhaps transfer them to halfway houses at their expense. To give them an opportunity to transition back to private life. Job Placement, that sort of thing.

Legalize marijuana at the Federal level and regulate it like alcohol and then tax it heavily to discourage it. And then let the states decide for themselves whether marijuana will be legal in their state or not. And then with the drug offenders the users not the dealers, especially the addicts, cocaine, heroin and meth, transfer them from prison to drug rehab at their expense. And once they complete that they would be moved to a halfway house, again at their expense to get help with transitioning back to private life. And going forward all drug addicts who are arrested for drug use, would go to drug rehab instead of prison or jail and this would be put on their medical record, not criminal record. And we could save so much money in this country with our criminal justice system and corrections system, law enforcement.

If we just grasped the fact that we live in a Federal Constitutional Republic in the form of a Liberal Democracy and with that comes basic fundamental constitutional rights, like the right for people to live their own lives without being harassed by government, as long of course we are not hurting anyone else with what we are doing, then we would stop locking people up just for doing unhealthy activities like smoking marijuana. Imagine how overcrowded our corrections system would be if we locked people up for drinking alcohol. We made the right decision on alcohol eighty years ago, now we should do the same thing with marijuana as well.