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smoking marijuana is illegal. simple as that. him
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Iraq vet loses free home offer after drug plea
The Associated Press
Posted : Wednesday Jan 14, 2009 20:52:05 EST
FORSYTH, Mo. — A nonprofit that builds homes for severely injured soldiers has rescinded its offer to a Branson veteran after he was convicted of a felony drug charge.
Scott West pleaded guilty Dec. 11 to possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute. The charge carries a sentence of five to 15 years in prison.
West lost both legs while serving in Iraq when his Humvee hit a roadside bomb. He was slated to receive a free house from Massachusetts-based Homes for Our Troops, but lost the offer under the group’s provision that veterans who commit felonies are not eligible.
“We take very seriously our obligations to our donors and volunteers,” John S. Gonsalves, founder of Homes for Our Troops, told the Springfield News-Leader for a story published Tuesday. “That is why our agreements with servicemen and women include a provision that allows us to end a project if it was clear the veteran has committed a felony criminal act.”
West was arrested after an Oct. 1, 2007, traffic stop in Taney County netted law officers 2.5 pounds of marijuana under the car seat, smoking pipes and digital scales.
According to the incident report, the officer who made the stop smelled marijuana coming from West’s car. The officer said in the report that he remembered receiving an anonymous tip that West might be involved in illegal drugs.
The officer told West about the tip and asked if he could search the car, the report says. West agreed to the search and told the officer that he had medical marijuana under the seat. Later, he led deputies to his house, where they found drug paraphernalia.
In late December, West told the News-Leader that despite his guilty plea, the drugs found in his car weren’t his and he doesn’t deal drugs.
West’s sentencing is scheduled for Feb. 19.
provision against the recipients committing felonies.
hey kids, don't plead guilty to possession of drugs with intent to sell.
It's also not a good idea to have digital scales in your car along with the drugs if you want to try to convince someone later that you really are innocent.
Wow....just wow.
Hey Kids!
Also remember you can volunteer to fight for this country, win a bunch of gold medals and even lose your legs....it's all good!
just don't get caught smoking, or selling something that has been here long before the people who made these laws to ruin the rest of your life.
So the time line seems clearer-- he was approved for the program. Then, in December he pleaded guilty to a felony, so he was removed from the program based upon its clear guidelines. He had not received the house yet.
But that would be waaaaayyyy to rational a thing to for the charity to do! (sorry, I couldn't remember what color sarcasm was supposed to be)
To bad he's not an NFL,Baseball or basket ball player. Pay a fine and move on. Or if he was a congressman or a mayor of Washington.
Busted! 100 Celebrities Arrested For Drug Possession: 21-40
http://www.popcrunch.com/busted-100-...session-21-40/
Busted! 100 Celebrities Arrested For Drug Possession
http://www.popcrunch.com/busted-100-...ug-possession/
Woody Harrelson, Willie Nelson, Frances, McDormand, Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, Justin Timberlake, Kimora Lee Simons, Nicole Richie, Paris Hilton, Snoop Dog, Lil Wayne, Charliz Theron, Matthew McConaughey
Did it keep Johnny Cash from making money singing? Did it keep Clinton out of the white house?
The list goes on.................................
to bad they can't use all that money on fighting drugs ($40 billion per year)to fight child molesters, gangs,fight home invasion, find a cure for Cancer.
that's not the point.
Why wow? The drug war creates so much crime and has spectacularly failed in its attempt to halt usage. It wastes so many tax dollars while drug dealers don't pay SS, Medicare, or any kind of income tax. It keeps the police and prison budgets huge, fighting an unwinnable war of attrition. There's so much collateral damage. My friend's wife was killed by a stray bullet while walking with her son thanks to a shootout involving drug dealers. Kid got to watch his mother die on the sidewalk in front of him because some assholes in Washington want to push their agenda without any regard to the consequences; who cares? The drug war isn't in their neighborhoods.
The fact that coke is illegal makes it so much easier for kids to get than alcohol, because drug dealers don't check IDs. I know in HS I could have gotten coke or any other drug much more easily than a bottle of vodka or a 12-pack of beer, so the protecting the children angle doesn't work either. , Jr. High too. If nothing else convinces you, then what about the government having no right to tell a grown person what he can and cannot put in his own body?
And there's one of them.See, it's not "simple as that" at all. Marijuana is less damaging to society than alcohol, and prohibition is ruining hundreds of thousands of lives all across your country every year for no reason. It is not a simple issue at all.
Mmmmmm, that's a tough one. Whilst marijuana is psychologically addictive, it is not physically addictive (a very important distinction - same with MDMA and LSD), whereas as coke, heroin, ice and speed are highly physically addictive, which adds another dimension to the decision.
I used to utterly believe in legalising, regulating and taxing all drugs - that way you guarantee purity, take the money out of the hands of crime, and governments can tax the drugs and use the proceeds in the health system. However, societies suffer enough from the legalised drugs, nicotine and alcohol, as is, so I think society giving tacit approval to other drugs would be unwise and likely cause more harm than good.
For marijuana (and other non-physically addictive substances) I think the model used in the ACT (where I live) works very well - possession of marijuana is decriminalised under one ounce, individuals can grow two plants each, and if you're caught smoking in a public place you get a $50 fine. That way people keep it out of the public domain and it allows the cops to get on with catching real criminals.
Regulation of drugs is a very, very, very complex issue, and I certainly don't have all the answers, but I know that the US government's War on Drugs is a total ing sham that causes more harm than it does good. Drug abuse is a health issue, not a legal and moral one.
Shhhhhh. You're making too much sense!![]()
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Who said I had one?
I hate being so cynical, but the only thing I have to say about this is what I say every time I hear about someone getting completely ed over solely because they puff a little herb... of course.
I see where you're coming from; I certainly don't want to see Joe Camel on TV teaching kids how cool it is to smoke crack. It definitely could not be a hands-off enterprise like the conservatives want everything in this country to be (worked great for our gas prices BTW! Thanks, Phil Gramm, you treasonous !). Because weed isn't addictive like coke and heroin, the money isn't there though, and you're not going to put much of a dent in drug profits if only weed is legal. About the only thing you'd really accomplish is stopping weed from being a gateway drug, since people wouldn't have to make connections with the coke/heroin/pcp/etc. world to buy their dime bags.
I've never smoked crack dumbass.
I probably smoke 12 ounces in a month. He could've just been stocking up. I mean, if I was getting four thousand dollar disability checks you'd probably catch me with a briefcase filled with more drugs than they had in Fear and Loathing. And that "GO UTSA" sweatshirt I've always wanted.
The Gateway Theory, as it applies to weed, is bull . It's ridiculous to claim that someone does cocaine because they did weed first. The only thing smoking weed prior to doing other drugs does to a person is makes them mentally OK with putting a drug in their body, and this barrier is almost non-existent if the person is a tobacco smoker before trying weed. The only reason gateway theory is applied to weed and not alcohol is because alcohol is legal. I would blame youthful desire to party and get ed up before blaming a substance, then I would blame alcohol, then tobacco, and then weed.
You're probably right on the gateway theory, as anyone who really wants coke can go out and find his own leads pretty easily, and doesn't need networking opportunities gained through weed purchases to get there. Let me amend my statement about the gateway theory to say that social conservatives would have absolutely no leg to stand on with their gateway theory if weed was legalized.
There would still be a gateway theory, it would just start with a different drug.
I'm not sure there would be. Weed is the drug everyone knows is harmless. Pretty much everything else illegal is classified by most as a hard drug, probably because everyone has smoked a joint or taken a bong hit. It seems a significantly lower proportion have done the "bad" drugs like coke, acid, shrooms, heroin, speed, etc. Everyone knows, though might not readily admit, that the weed scare-tactics are bull , and hence the idea that the weed itself isn't so bad, but the coke 'it inevitably leads to' is the big problem.
Well that charity just took a nosedive for the worse in the PR department. This is a ty situaton for both sides and the charity neglected to follow the 6 P's the military loves to follow: Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. I'm all for legalizaion of marijuana and drugs/pros ution...its crazy that idiotic Christians that believe in an unhealthy fantasy and use that crap to justify women getting beat by pimps and war vets like this guy go to jail and lose his house.
Makes me want to go Gran Torino on those pricks.
On another note, alcohol and cigarrettes are way harder to get than weed/illegal drugs if you are underage or don't have a picture ID. I can still remember seeing drug deals go on right in front of me during an art lecture of just 20-30 kids back in the 10th grade.
Last edited by Cane; 02-25-2009 at 09:58 AM.
While I think weed should be decriminalized and I think the situation sucks for him the rules clearly state that the recipient not be convicted of a felony. Does it look very bad on their part? Yes. Should they have done more research? Yes.
And I know many people who have not gone into the harder drugs but just enjoy some hippie lettuce from time to time.
actually, in this case it is a simple issue.
good point
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