Dozens of Cops, Judges, Prosecutors Present Letter to Congress to Legalize Weed, Expunge All Convictions

 

The organization is formerly referred to as enforcement Against Prohibition, now referred to as enforcement Action Partnership, alongside the National Black Police Association, and Fair and Just Prosecution have signed onto a revolutionary letter to Congress urging the federal to legalize marijuana and expunge all past convictions concerning marijuana.

In addition to the three major groups signing on to the letter, dozens of current and former prosecutors, judges, and cops.

I'm proud to hitch these enforcement officials in saying we'd like to right the wrongs of the failed war on drugs.

We remain focused on combating violent crime, and therefore the work we've done clearing cannabis records is opening doors for thousands and strengthening our communities.

The letter went out last month and is addressed to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House legislator Steny Hoyer.

It calls on House lawmakers to "Swiftly bring" the bill, dubbed the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act, to the ground for a vote this month.

The group accurately portrays the matter created by the war on marijuana and the way it degrades trust in police.

A significant driver of public distrust in enforcement is our specialization in low-level marijuana arrests.

If marijuana had never been criminalized, more Americans would greet us with warmth and cooperation instead of fear and malice.

When community members refuse to speak to us, fail to present evidence, or maybe to report a criminal offense, our jobs become far more difficult.

Legalizing marijuana will help alleviate this tension and permit us to specialize in our shared priorities: responding to emergencies and curbing serious crime.

The resources wont to enforce marijuana law violations might be shifted and won't to more effectively tackle serious and violent crimes.

Even as more states legalize marijuana, police made quite 663,000 marijuana arrests - 92% of them for possession - last year alone.

Homicide and sex crimes units struggle to urge evidence examined in a timely manner.

By legalizing marijuana at the federal level, we'll send a message to each local department during this country about our real priorities.

Our allegiance lies with crime survivors and would-be victims, not with marijuana prohibition.

By that specialize in serious crime and creating safe neighborhoods - instead of arresting people for a drug most Americans think should be legal - we'll be ready to solve more crimes and earn back the trust of our communities.

This conversation is long overdue and it must change now because the war on drugs fosters a violent and criminal society.

It should go further and move to decriminalize all substances, not just marijuana.

It is estimated that crime constitutes 86% of the federal prison population.

The research cited within the letter also points this fact out.

If you honestly believe that black lives matter, it's your duty to involve an end to the war.

Ending the war would have profound effects on police interactions in black communities.

No longer would cops be ready to launch fishing expeditions in an effort to catch black people with a substance deemed illegal by the state.

What's more, because the letter points out, it might decrease crime by eliminating the monopoly on drug sales held by organized criminal gangs.

Instead, the state creates crime by pushing the sale and control of those substances into the illegal black markets - usually monopolized by gang members in poor communities.

Criminalizing marijuana has been a boon to the illegal market where there are not any regulations, product testing, etc.

Resourceful teenagers don't usually have trouble accessing marijuana when it's illegal.

Legalizing marijuana shrinks the dimensions of the market available to teens, which simultaneously reduces their exposure to a criminal activity generally.

A profitable underground market supports the high demand for marijuana, very much like it did during the prohibition of alcohol within the 1920s and '30s. Calling marijuana a "Controlled" substance is illusory; where it's illegal, we've no control.

Over time, marijuana legalization will drive out the underground market, even as alcohol bootleggers disappeared after repealing alcohol prohibition.

The underground market still flourishes because marijuana is legal in some places and not others.

The most impactful thanks to taking marijuana profits faraway from criminal organizations and reduce youth access are to manage marijuana similarly to how we regulate alcohol and cigarettes.

The illegality of drug possession and use is what keeps the low-level users and dealers in and out of the court systems, and most of those people are poor black men.

Black people are more likely to receive a harsher punishment for an equivalent drug crime as a White.

The War on Drugs takes good people and turns them into criminals every single minute of every single day.

The system is about up in such how that it fans the flames of violent crime by essentially building a factory that seems violent criminals.

As stated by the enforcement experts in their letter, when drugs are legalized, gang violence drops - drastically.

Not only does it have an enormous effect on the localized gangs in America, but the legalization of medicine is crippling to the violent foreign drug cartels too.

We will see more senseless killings and more innocent lives stripped of opportunity by getting entangled within the system.