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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32404 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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Very few to none. Almost all significant jail time for marijuana is for intent to distribute. Most states which haven't made it legal decriminalized it in small quantities or don't actively prosecute cases as of decades ago.

Its easy to assume that based on public info, but it is still an assumption. "Nearly 40% of law enforcement agencies around the country did not submit any data in 2021 to a newly revised FBI crime statistics collection program" https://www.themarshallproject.org/2022/06/14/what-did-fbi-data-say-about-crime-in-2021-it-s-too-unreliable-to-tell

I'm willing to believe its extremely rare for simple possession to be the only thing a person is in jail for, but the threshold for intent to distribute is at like .5 oz. A half ounce of weed is more likely to be a purchase by a person who doesn't want to go buy weed every week than someone who plans on selling 1 gram at a time. Really makes me wonder how many people in jail for selling weed were ever even selling weed at all.

Half an ounce could really go either way. You're underestimating how much weed dealing is really, really petty nonsense.

Intent to distribute/felony possession is different from state to state, but many are in the pounds and few (maybe none) are as low as half an ounce. Federal numbers have been absurdly large for a while since they're mostly interested in international trafficking.

Fair point about felony thresholds, it seems only 5-10 states care whether you have a half ounce or not (based on this ). The thing is though, i'm pretty sure if you are caught going between states with weed you can get hit with trafficking in those states, so even if the feds don't care, a local PD could decide to be a dick about how they write up that 1/2 ounce.

Yes, but adding "intent to distribute" to a simple possession charge is routine.

Is it? I thought I heard some urban legend about how "intent to distribute" was something they could tack on just on the basis of sheer mass, but that it still required meeting some minimum threshold. But the drug war hasn't been something I've paid attention for a long time.

Its common for people with extensive previous records or who are involved in violent crime. I don't think that's what people are thinking about when they hear someone went to jail for Marijuana for years.

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