• @[email protected]
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    101 year ago

    2.2 -100lbs is a massive range especially when the weight every part of the plant. That’s a difference of growing enough for a month to smoke and supplying the neighborhood. Two massively different goals.

  • @[email protected]
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    181 year ago

    Pretty messed up. Let this poor guy go. On the bright side, does free healthcare and free room and board?

    • @[email protected]
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      171 year ago

      Free healthcare in that the prison doctor or nurse will refuse to diagnose him with anything until he’s on his death bed and then give him comfort release so they don’t have to take care of him?

  • FlavoredButtHair
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    261 year ago

    Remember come election time who is responsible for this. Just like actions, elections have consequences.

  • appel
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    781 year ago

    This stuff just makes my blood boil. Those 3 assholes on the parole board are complete sociopaths. There’s absolutely no justice here.

    • @[email protected]
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      1 year ago

      It’s actually a requirement I think.

      In WA during lockdown, they requested compassionate release of someone who was paralyzed on half his body and confined to a chair. The DOC decided that he was a threat to society and needed to be kept in the COVID greenhouse.

      • prole
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        1 year ago

        Well, political positions, yes. But there are tons of government employees around the country that are just normal people working at a regulatory agency. The overwhelming majority of them. They’re just doing their job.

        At least for now. SCOTUS is very close to changing that.

  • @[email protected]
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    1261 year ago

    It’s a flower that makes people happy and hungry. God fucking damn it. There is no fucking reason to destroy people’s lives over this.

      • prole
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        1 year ago

        Nobody has ever been able to explain to me how cannabis use is incompatible with Christianity in any way.

        But then again, I don’t expect Christians to be consistent or logical about anything.

        • @[email protected]
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          21 year ago

          Remember that part of the Bible where Jesus was like “forget all the old laws, and just focus on the point, being cool to one another” and then gave a speech about the importance of monogamy? Or when he held the last supper, demonstrating a way to worship without needing a fancy temple, and then said “this is my blood, I’m using a simple cup, but you should always use a gold chalice for this part”. Or how he explained you need a relic of a saint (usually a bit of bone) in every altar or the magic won’t work?

          Do you remember the part where Jesus claimed he was the one and only child of a deity? Because when I read it, he called himself “the son of man” and called everyone his brothers and sisters

          Jesus was born in July. The Roman sun god had a son, who was sacrificed for the sake of humanity. Want to guess when his birthday was?

          There’s a reason why it makes no sense. It’s not the religion you think it is

        • @[email protected]
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          1 year ago

          I don’t even think that article adequately conveys how thoroughly racist the roots of it is. They don’t even quote the awful things Anslinger said to justify cannabis prohibition.

          “There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos, and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz, and swing, result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and any others.”

          “…the primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races.”

          “Marijuana is an addictive drug which produces in its users insanity, criminality, and death.”

          “Reefer makes darkies think they’re as good as white men.”

          “Marihuana leads to pacifism and communist brainwashing”

          “You smoke a joint and you’re likely to kill your brother.”

          “Marijuana is the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind.”

          https://fee.org/articles/the-racist-roots-of-marijuana-prohibition/

           

          And then there’s this from Nixon staffer John Ehrlichman:

          “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people,” former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman told Harper’s writer Dan Baum for the April cover story published Tuesday.

          “You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities,” Ehrlichman said. “We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

          https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/index.html

    • @[email protected]
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      1 year ago

      Reminds me of the Ballarat Bandit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-gBErW4aoY

      To put it short, he was a guy who led federal officers on a chase through the desert. They didn’t know who he was, but he was stealing from travelers passing through. It wasn’t far from some US government facilities, and this being not long after 9/11, they’re super worried he’s a terrorist.

      Spoiler: he was a Canadian who started growing weed to help his wife’s medical issues. He apparently made some primo bud and started selling it. Naturally, he got caught and was thrown in jail. When he got out, he moved out to the desert and tried to survive on his own.

      Jail changed him. He became more paranoid and detached from his family, friends, and society. He wasn’t the least bit dangerous until they threw him in prison.

      • @[email protected]
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        71 year ago

        I’m all for legalized marijuana, but going into another country and breaking their laws is never a good idea. There are places in the world that would be a death sentence.

        • @[email protected]
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          1 year ago

          The guy was clearly mentally unstable after he left prison. He never would have done that in the first place otherwise. And he effectively did get a death sentence for it.

          • @[email protected]
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            1 year ago

            According to the article titled ‘Ballarat Bandit’ lost to family for years, August 4, 2006 for Pahrump Valley Times, Johnston was living in Canada when they were arrested and charged with trafficking marijuana.

            Eventually, the couple left Anarchist Mountain and returned to Prince Edward Island, where Rob Johnston had been born and raised. After the birth of her fourth child, Tommi was diagnosed with leukemia and access to medical care became vital. Johnston began cultivating marijuana, discovered he had a knack for it and turned it into a cash crop.

            In 1997, when the crop was discovered by Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Johnston was sentenced to two consecutive four-year prison terms. It was then that the couple was legally married, in what Tommi described as an ultimately futile effort on her part to convince him that she would not abandon him.

            Edit: HTML linking

  • @[email protected]
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    161 year ago

    What could the parole board’s justification for denial possibly be? I don’t see any risk from this guy, unless there’s something more nefarious than 2.2 lbm of pot going on.

    • @[email protected]
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      1 year ago

      Guarantee that they looked nowhere beyond the actual text of the law and didn’t consider anything else. This is only “it’s illegal because we say it is and we will punish you for not conforming”.

  • vortic
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    1221 year ago

    I don’t understand how 40 years of prison for a non-violent crime isn’t considered to be both “cruel” and “unusual”. It is objectively cruel. I certainly hope that it is also unusual. I certainly hope that there aren’t many more like him, imprisoned for decades for what amounts to personal-use levels of pot. 5.5 lbs of pot when you include the stem and roots isn’t that much and certainly sounds like a personal supply to me.

    • @[email protected]
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      651 year ago

      These people are kept in jail to be used in labor. It’s not about being cruel. It’s about making money in the cheapest way possible. Since Alabama is a hellhole with no workforce they turn to modern day slavery.

      • @[email protected]
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        81 year ago

        Yeah, when you read the article you see that the parole board has stopped issuing paroles almost entirely in the last couple of years. This is 100% about manufacturing cheap labor and keeping the oligarchy running smoothly.

      • @[email protected]
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        1 year ago

        Oh it’s both. It’s definitely both, the cruelty and the slave labor, which is cruel in and of itself as well.

    • @[email protected]
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      191 year ago

      It is the most cruel people in the world that hide behind a law book and the pretense of being fair and worse even: past cases.

      But since you first have to study for a decade, then kiss ass for a decade or two before even beginning to qualify for ‘JUDGE’ it is not more as normal you will have lost ALL BONDS WITH REGULAR SOCIETY.

      If you think 15$+tax+tip is fine for a glass of wine with lunch on a daily basis; you are NOTTTTTTT qualified to speak for the benefit of society : in contrary!

      • @[email protected]
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        1 year ago

        Yeah I think you’re mistaking what a Judges role is. It is merely to uphold the law. The problem in the US is that the role is so politicised that the idea they are legal experts rather than representatives of parties is being lost. They should be representative of society to an extent but ultimately the main qualification is legal experience.

        The issue is the law itself and that comes back to the elected politicians in Alabama. It’s a problem of one party rule, and first past the post electoral system plus gerrymandering which means a stagnant political system dominated by one segment of society. The US increasingly looks like a it’s just a large collection of failed democracies.

        You don’t specifically need representative judges. You need electoral reform so you have an actual representative democracy, and everything else comes from that.

        • @[email protected]
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          51 year ago

          Judges are “supposed to be” impartial, not representative. That’s one of our many problems. They shouldn’t be conservative or liberal, they should be judges, but people don’t seem to be capable of impartiality, especially ones with any degree of power. Just like men who claim to want to lead really wish to rule. Those who would judge really just want to decide.

        • @[email protected]
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          41 year ago

          The MAKING of the law favors the establishment. I say use the guillotine first, then new laws. Slave master still a slave master now, only the slaves believe they’re free

        • @[email protected]
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          11 year ago

          I’m stating it’s the WRONG ROLE law should NOT be upheld in the same way for poor and rich. For uneducated and the wise.

          IT SHOULD NOT BE THE SAME favoring the poor and weak.

          HOWEVER IT FAVORS THE EXACT OPOSITE.

          • @[email protected]
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            11 year ago

            It shouldn’t favor anybody.

            If anything, it goes to show why legal systems are plain and simply bad ideas and why people need to have the ultimate authority to handle business on their own again. That way, at least, it’s fair, for every man is provided for by either victory, ingenuity, or death.

            • vortic
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              11 year ago

              Okay, I’m genuinely curious, can you elaborate on what you’re advocating? What time in human history do you think we should return to? Tribalism?

              I don’t think there has ever been a period of time where there wasn’t some form of social organization. Humans are naturally social and tend to create social groups with rules and enforcement mechanisms. Even if we were to start with a blank slate where there were no governments, companies, tribes, or social groups, humans would quickly recreate them because we have evolved to make use of social structures. We are stronger as a group than individually and groups only survive by having rules and methods of enforcement.

              • @[email protected]
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                11 year ago

                You’re not genuinely curious or here in good faith, you’re derisive, vindictive and guilty of every moral failing you’re about to accuse me of having for not thinking the way you do.

                So you do not get the luxury of a debate with me.

                Now I said that legal systems are plain and simply bad ideas, and that sadly is not going to change no matter who does what. It’s just the reality of the situation.

                So move on from this conversation like you would have told me to had I wasted your time arguing with you about it.

                • vortic
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                  11 year ago

                  If I came across as derisive, I didn’t mean to. I was genuinely trying to ask what you meant.

                  I don’t know how it is possible for me to be vindictive when I don’t know you. I don’t want revenge against you. You’ve done nothing to me.

                  I wasn’t going to accuse you of any kind of moral failing and am not sure why you took my response as a personal attack on your moral character.

                  You stated that “legal systems are plain and simply bad ideas” and that “people need to have the ultimate authority to handle business on their own again”. That sounds like you are advocating a return to something that existed in the past where people could act autonomously, without regard for the legal system.

                  I am responding that I don’t think that people have ever had the “ultimate authority to handle business on their own” and am wondering if you can give an explanation of what you are suggesting. I’m arguing that, when presented with anarchy, humans will always tend to create social structures and legal systems.

      • @[email protected]
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        201 year ago

        Wtf. If they were growing five hundred plants, 40 years is too much. It’s fucking pot. People get rich selling that shit legally now. Growers should be released.

      • @[email protected]
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        Bullshit, reported for spreading false information.

        there is no record of any previous arrests or charges for Leon Bud Hotchkiss in Alabama¹²³. He was a first-time offender when he was convicted of marijuana trafficking in 2013². He has maintained a clean institutional record since then².

        Fucking trump supporters are the worst, you can’t get anything right.

  • BruceTwarzen
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    321 year ago

    Dude should try to overthrow the government and attack some police officers, he’ll be back home in 2 to 5 years

  • SuperDuper
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    Life sentence for growing some pot. Meanwhile the Jan 6th insurrectionists are getting maybe 2 years, or if you’re a card carrying proud boy terrorist you might be looking at up to 20 years.

    • @[email protected]
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      641 year ago

      Some guy beat someone so bad they need 24hr supervision, and he got 7 years. Cops get of with paid vacation for shooting or running over: dogs, unarmed adults and children, flash bang babies, drunk driving, beating their SO, planting drugs on innocent people. Did I miss anything?

      War on drugs, no, it’s a war on personal freedoms.

      • @[email protected]
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        131 year ago

        It’s not even just a war on personal freedoms. It’s a war on anyone the people running the system don’t like. The US has been at war with its own citizens longer than I’ve been alive.

        • @[email protected]
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          11 year ago

          Well since before it was a country. Remember tar and feathering as a form of political discourse?

      • @[email protected]
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        161 year ago

        There are actual recordings from the Nixon Whitehouse where they decided that since they could no longer legally discriminate against people based on race, they’d have to find another way and drugs was it.

      • @[email protected]
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        51 year ago

        A war specifically on Black and Hispanic personal freedoms, at least historically that’s how it began.

      • andrew_bidlaw
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        The weird outlier is a recent charge of a guy who assaulted 6 cops and got 5 years. A glitch in the system.

    • Masterblaster
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      41 year ago

      i guess we should take justice into our own hands instead of waiting for someone else to do the right thing.

            • @[email protected]
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              11 year ago

              The Jan 6 people made the one critical mistake that a revolutionary must never make: they failed to win. Every other mistake they made was recoverable, but that one damned them.

              • Masterblaster
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                31 year ago

                not sure if your comment was meant with sarcasm, but you’re 100% correct. you have to set every other concern aside and understand that you do whatever it takes to win. whatever. it. takes. if you weren’t prepared to do that, you should have never tried in the first place.

                the J6 people were idiots. they thought that there was some magical lever that, if pulled, would grant them their wishes - kinda like some moron sovereign citizen that thinks magic words will get them out of jail or consequences.

                it just doesn’t work like that. you can’t just capture the capitol and think that wins the game. it’s much deeper. the real revolutionaries will fight thousands of unseen battles in clandestine ways using different tools than torches and pitchforks.