Everyone knows, or SHOULD know, what a horrible effect the "war on drugs" is having on our country. Essentially it is Orwellian: The war goes on, not because of some moral imperative, not because it's helping people, but because war is meant to be continual. By keeping us in a constant state of war - the war on drugs, the war on terror - the government has been able to gradually erode our rights and liberties and do what the government does best: Look out for itself.
What these gentlemen suggest is simple: From now on, if you are called to serve on a jury deliberating a violation of state or federal drugs laws, vote to acquit without regard to the evidence presented, except in cases involving acts of violence or intentional harm.
If asked to serve on a jury deliberating a violation of state or federal drug laws, we will vote to acquit, regardless of the evidence presented. Save for a prosecution in which acts of violence or intended violence are alleged, we will — to borrow Justice Harry Blackmun's manifesto against the death penalty — no longer tinker with the machinery of the drug war. No longer can we collaborate with a government that uses nonviolent drug offenses to fill prisons with its poorest, most damaged and most desperate citizens.
I applaud these men, and I think that they have a legitimate method to bring attention to the fact that our draconian drugs laws DO NOT WORK!
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