It hit me that many times I've stood on the hot pavement in mainly the mill village watching cops in paramilitary gear handcuffing people so much that it made me wonder why I was standing on the hot pavement watching cops in paramilitary gear handcuffing people.
You see, as I've editorialized before, I believe the time to end the prohibition on marihuana has come and gone.
(This is the second of a two-part column series on police misconceptions. The series ends next week.)
I won't belabor that point, instead I'll just direct you to the link and those who support legalization can knight me with a crown of hemp leaves and those who don't can behead me using a knife of outdated reasoning. This column just posted to CNN today lends more credence to the argument, by the way.
Where myself and my readers who curse marihuana busts — yes I am using the old 1930s spelling of marijuana because I feel like William Randolph Hearst today — butt heads is that I have a little more of an inside track on the matter.
The people who criticize the police for making marihuana busts scream to the crest of Medoc Mountain that they should be out busting crack dealers and heroin dealers.
The truth of the matter is, according to several law enforcement sources, usually when police go on these raids they aren't necessarily looking for marihuana, instead they are looking for cocaine.
And the reason you're not seeing too many cocaine stories these days is because if the amount is enough these cases are picked up by the feds and getting the feds to talk about an arrest is a near-impossibility. Yes, the feds can spy and wiretap citizens but they clam up like a guilty boy who poured water in the fruit cake — a true story I'll tell you about some day — when it comes to the arrests of the local gentry.
The way to combat this silence is through a little website I use called the Pacer system where for a nominal fee you can access federal indictments and so forth. That was how I broke the Spoke Garner story after a source told me he was busted.
All this aside, to think that the cops are not going after coke and crack dealers is just foolish just as it would be foolish and a risk to their career not to arrest someone with a user amount of marihuana because they might personally believe as I do the prohibition has gone on long enough. Believe me, there are cops out there who believe marihuana should be legalized.
It's pretty obvious cops don't have tunnel vision and are working beyond the scope of marihuana, it's just when the feds are involved the information flow ends and local police can't discuss it without permission upon fed adoption.
What does all this mean to you, the reader? It means you will still have to contend with marihuana stories on rrspin despite your belief and my belief it should be legal. So continue to write your comments on how petty it might seem to you but realize the cops are not just targeting cannabis when they go on these raids — they are acting within the scope of the law and the law right now says marihuana is illegal — Lance Martin
