dope growers give away £400,000 profits to poor, get 3 years

[HM-PuFFNSTuFF]

Robin Hood was just a common thief.

Hoarding wealth while others starve is far worse than liberating that wealth and feeding poor buggers.

[GONNAFISTYA]

Eraser is a closet authoritarian.

[seremtan]

...you can't go do illegal things knowing full well what the consequences can be, and then when caught go all holier than thou by proclaiming you did it to help people.

i don't think they went holier than thou - they just told the judge they spent the money on poor africans - presumably when he asked - it being a court of law, and the question of what they spent their ill-gotten gains on being a pertinent question in that context

[seremtan]

Robin Hood was just a common thief.

Hoarding wealth while others starve is far worse than liberating that wealth and feeding poor buggers.

What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a bank?

[MKJ]

i don't think they went holier than thou - they just told the judge they spent the money on poor africans - presumably when he asked - it being a court of law, and the question of what they spent their ill-gotten gains on being a pertinent question in that context

so the topic title should be, "dope growers get 3 years. ps they spent the gains on charity"?

[seremtan]

sure, if the OP was the editor of the Daily Fail

[HM-PuFFNSTuFF]

I think the only thing everyone can agree on is that money is being pissed away

no

[Eraser]

Eraser is a closet authoritarian.

You shall bow to my will

[EtUL]

Has anyone met anyone who thinks weed should be illegal and has smoked it?

[seremtan]

yes

[U4EA]

Robin Hood was just a common thief.

Hoarding wealth while others starve is far worse than liberating that wealth and feeding poor buggers.

Wasn't this sort of thievery a response to oppressive taxation to begin with?

As evidenced by this totally accurate documentary I've found:

[GONNAFISTYA]

Has anyone met anyone who thinks weed should be illegal and has smoked it?

Yes. Several. And they all vote Conservative.

Shocking, yes I know.

[Captain]

Best Robin Hood movie ever

[U4EA]

There is actually one legitimate reason for not decriminalizing marijuana. I read this a few months ago in a discussion on Reddit.

Some of the short term effects of smoking marijuana include impairment of short-term and working memory, psychomotor coordination, and concentration. Impairments of this nature will have a negative effect on somebody if they were to then attempt driving a vehicle. Similar to alcohol by this point, sure.

The key difference here is that for alcohol, there exists a scientific metric [blood alcohol content] that corelates with the level of intoxication of the driver. Therefore, in the interest of general safety, you can set limits on acceptable BAC levels for drivers. You can accurately test BAC level while the person is intoxicated, and when sober again [BAC drops with sobriety]. Not only can you run blood tests, but police officers can also quickly and semi-accurately get an idea of whether the person needs to be brought in for blood tests by using a breathalyzer.

Contrastingly, for marijuana, there are no such tests. The presence of THC can be detectable from 3 up to 10 days after usage. There is no way to accurately and scientifically determine whether the driver was intoxicated at the time of the test. So you might have lots of intoxicated drivers later claiming that they weren't and the tests won't be able to refute that.

[Tsakali]

ever heard of sobriety testing?

walk that line, touch that nose. get back in your car and drive off.

To become impaired from smoking weed, you'd have to smoke alot of it.... alot of. it.

[Transient]

Contrastingly, for marijuana, there are no such tests.

Sure there is. Just have the officer ask the driver to take his sunglasses off.

[U4EA]

So, subjective "tests" that put the driver at the mercy and opinion of the officer at the scene. There's a reason they got supplanted with breathalyzers and BAC tests.

I don't smoke weed so I don't know how much of it is required to cause a change in driving ability.

[GONNAFISTYA]

You should try it. Then you'd find out that smoking weed doesn't impede physical function. No slurriness of words, no wobble-footed walking and no "this is America? What? I thought this wuz America?" episodes that booze does to your body and brain.

It slows you down mentally in some higher reasoning (none of which required for driving really) and can fuck up your short-term memory, but it aint gonna fuck too much with your driving ability unless you fall asleep at the wheel. And you'd need to smoke a fucklot of it to get even close.

[U4EA]

Fair enough.

it aint gonna fuck too much with your driving ability

But, how much is too much? What's a safe amount of fuckage and what's not? Who's going to make this decision anyway? Does marijuana have no impact at all on things like reaction time?

[mrd]

Aye. 'Round these parts, it's common practice to share a doob around the car whilst en route to somewhere.

I think the only danger would be if the driver had never smoked before or hadn't smoked for a long time. In my experience, stoned drivers usually just drive slower and if anything, miss their turn-off. They don't drive aggressively, nor do they get liquid-courage, like someone might from alcohol.

Not to say that it's the greatest thing in the world to drive high, but compared to driving drunk, it's not even a legitimate comparison.

[Eraser]

it aint gonna fuck too much with your driving ability

Yeah right. I don't believe that for a second.
Even here in the Netherlands you're gonna be fined if you drive while smoking weed.

[Eraser]

ever heard of sobriety testing?

walk that line, touch that nose. get back in your car and drive off.

I've never understood how such a completely unscientific, unreliable and subjective method of determining someone's level of intoxication ever got accepted by the police (in the US, they don't do that here in the Netherlands).

[Transient]

In my experience, stoned drivers usually just drive slower and if anything, miss their turn-off.

That sounds familiar.

[losCHUNK]

ever heard of sobriety testing?

walk that line, touch that nose. get back in your car and drive off.

I've never understood how such a completely unscientific, unreliable and subjective method of determining someone's level of intoxication ever got accepted by the police (in the US, they don't do that here in the Netherlands).

They still do that ?, in the UK you get given something to blow on before asking for your name.

That test just sounds like something the police can have a giggle with before getting back to work.

[HM-PuFFNSTuFF]

http://norml.org/library/item/marijuana ... c-evidence