A friend who admits she smokes marijuana says laws declaring the drug illegal are "stupid."
"When the law is stupid I see no reason to obey it," she adds.
She and other members of the Floyd County’s marijuana community are upset over Commonwealth’s Attorney Stephanie Shortt’s dogged enforcement of laws against marijuana manufacturing and use. Shortt recently obtained a guilty plea from Patrick Fenn, a local pot user who grows a lot of the drug for his use and to hand out to friends. Shortt is also threatening to take Fenn’s house because Virginia law allows confiscation of property used in drug production and distribution.
"Stephanie Shortt’s problem is that she never smoked grass," my friend declared.
I don’t know if Shortt smoked grass as a young woman or not. A lot of people her age did so during their college years. It’s not a question I normally ask a candidate for office. For the record, I did not smoke grass in college. My drug of choice was scotch and I abused it and other alcohol for more than 30 years. My last use of that drug was 14 years, 11 months and two days ago.
Shortt campaigned for office on a promise to enforce the drug laws and to crack down on the "get out of jail free" plea deals of previous Commonwealth’s Attorney Gordon Hannett. Her pursuit of Fenn and other marijuana growers in the county has angered some of the pot heads who supported her in the 2007 elections, making Shortt one of those rare politicians who is in trouble with some supporters for actually delivering on a campaign promise.
"We must be a nation of laws," said John Adams, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. That notion provided one of the foundations of that historic document and the Constitution that followed it.
Yet I hear from people who suggest that we should be a nation of laws only when they happen to agree with that law. This issue has popped up in recent weeks with our stories on the the widespread violations of traffic laws.
Says one emailer: "The stop sign at Barberry should be a yield sign. It used to be one. It should be again."
Or another: "Passing on the right is not that dangerous. It should not be against the law."
If we are to be a nation of laws can we be one if people are allowed to pick and choose which laws to obey and discard those they feel are "stupid" or "wrong?"
Some might say that breaking a traffic law is no big deal. After all, traffic laws are not even considered misdemeanors, much less a felony.
If you run a stop sign and cause an accident that causes a death you can be charged with vehicular manslaughter, which is a felony. If a car ahead of you is turning left and you whip around on the right and strike a pedestrian, motorcyclist or another vehicle and someone dies you could, and should, end up in prison.
And if you grow marijuana and give enough of it to your friends that is called distribution under the law and is also a felony.
A felony conviction can cost you basic rights of citizenship, including the right to vote, to obtain a passport and travel or keep you from getting a job and making a living.
Yeah, the law might be stupid but the real stupidity is putting your future at risk by ignoring it.
All the talk will not change one thing. Mrs. Shortt is bound by law to prosecute the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia, the Supreme Court is very clear about selective enforcement and our rights. Until marijuana is made legal Mrs. Shortt is obligated to the citizen’s of Floyd County that elected her and those that didn’t to prosecute the laws as they are written. Now may I suggest if you don’t like the laws, talk to your Senator about them. I don’t like to wear my seat belt..but if I get caught I know what will happen…same with marijuana and other laws…if you choose to break them, be prepare to face the punishment.
When the law is wrong (as it is in this case) it does not deserve to be respected and it should not be followed. Authority is never more important than what is right and wrong.
The many thousands of Floyd County residents (and I assure you I am not exagerating) who smoke marijuana are all criminals by the current law’s definition. Should they all be thrown in jail? Do you believe your friend who smokes marijuana deserves to be thrown in jail because of their personal choice of what they put in their own bodies?
The real stupidity is laying down your civil liberties for some false concept of justice that does not stand up to any sort of critical analysis.
How is it that alcohol and cigarettes are illegal while marijuana is not? It’s obvious to anyone who has studied the health impacts that these legal substances are far more dangerous than marijuana. The law makes no sense on “public health” grounds and what other grounds could their possibly be for restricting people’s personal freedoms in this way?
Remember that old slogan about the United States, the one about how we live in the “land of the free” well as long as we are throwing innocent people in jail and stealing their land that is nothing but empty rhetoric. It’s time for this country to start measuring up to it’s promise. The founding fathers certainly never could have imagined that we would make marijuana illegal. It’s a travesty of justice.
Stephanie Shortt should be ashamed of herself. She needs to stop persecuting productive members of the Floyd County community and instead spend her time on real criminals (there must be some, right?) who actually hurt other people. If you don’t hurt anyone else, if you don’t steal from anyone else – then you are not a criminal. The real crime is the law itself.
It’s astonishing to me that you think that the people of Floyd who voted for Shortt shouldn’t be angry at her for what she is doing. Do you realize that most of the people that voted for her have smoked marijuana before? And a good number of them have grown it and “shared it with their friends.” Shortt’s actions indicate that she would steal their property and try to throw them in jail if she got the chance. That’s not how I would treat my voters if I was her.
The citizens of Floyd County love marijuana. Everyone with a bit of sense knows that marijuana is a large part of the “alternative community” that makes Floyd county an interesting place. Hell even the locals smoke marijuana in Floyd. And they have every right to love marijuana in a truly free country. Your thinking is old and outdated and it will be overcome as people begin to start thinking more critically.
And I’d like to leave an open invitation for anyone who would like to run for county office who is for the legalization of drugs. I will personally make sure your campaign is extremely well funded and that you get many thousands of votes. It’s time we turn the corner on drug prohibition.
Authority must never be respected over what’s right. Authority is never more important than freedom. If everyone thought like you did over the last 200 years this country would be a very sad place indeed. Laws are often wrong, and when they are wrong the only right thing to do is to disobey them.
Jonny:
Sounds like you are using too much of what a convicted murderer in Floyd County Circuit Court this past week called "that good Floyd County weed."
The alternative lifestylers make up just one part of the many diverse parts of the community that make Floyd County so unique but they neither control the County nor dominate its culture. Floyd County is not Berkeley and the hippies are not about to seize control of the government. The have — and do — contribute much to the community.
Floyd County has long had its share of underground cultures, from the moonshiners of my youth to the hippies of the 70s to the meth heads of today. All practiced their illegal trade. Most argued that what they did should be legal. Didn’t happen then, won’t happen now.
Marijuana is a destructive drug that breeds dependence by its user. Those who choose to use it long term will pay down the pike with health problems, memory loss and other problems.
As a recovering addict whose drug of choice was alcohol, I will not endorse the legalization of another destructive drug. I am not a fellow traveler when it comes to the use of illegal drugs and I will never join that parade.
Forgive me my ignorance Doug, I’m but a lay person yet even I know that the majority of Law and Statute is created to address a societal problem or injustice . . . yeah right . . . and I micturate Moët Premier Cru 😉 The majority of law is devised and promulgated by vested interests.
Motoring law was driven(sic) by the need for safe transport, the laws regarding marijuana were based on ignorance and outright disinformation and manipulation of the public. I assume you know the history and farce of the “Reefer Madness” film? And it’s still illegal to grow industrial hemp in the US even though it contains virtually no traceable amount of THC. There’s nothing like a bit of wilful ignorance to screw up a legitimate prospective and environmentally friendly industry.
Here you cannot apply the same logic to a need for safe roads and a personal choice but if you want to try you can start by removing the driving licence of everyone on a prescription medicines that alter perception and mental acuity.
I’m not a marijuana user, but I have a dear freind who is drastically afflicted with MS and functions only with its assistance, I have made myself aware of its millennia of history and its uses both medicinal and recreational. It barely registers on the chart for injury and death by its use and it’s clear that it is an easy and politically advantageous target for law enforcement . . . Apocryphal personal observation indicates that many law enforcement officials are barely capable of and only motivated to pursuing the ‘low hanging fruit’ that includes the marijuana user (and on our crowded European roads, the Motorist).
Rather than make vacuous allegory in your rant wouldn’t we be better employed looking to take the statute book and give it a dam good ‘colonic’.
I’m not arguing that law should be ignored if we feel it unjust, I am saying that we should not slavishly kowtow to a law simply because it’s written. Apparently God has given us free will . . . but only so far as our self described betters allow us to think 😉
…and it is one lost on those who argue that Stephanie should be selective in what laws she chooses to enforce. We can argue until the cows come home over whether or not grass should be legal. I don’t happen to believe it should. I’ve witnessed too much of the damage it can cause. I didn’t care much for the national 55 miles-per-hour speed limit but I slowed down because breaking that law would have cost me my license after too many speeding tickets.
When someone knowingly breaks the law, he or she should be prepared to accept the penalty if caught. Arguing that Stephanie or any other prosecutor should look the other way simply because some people like to get stoned is a step towards anarchy.
I know a number of Floyd County residents who came here to live as part of the alternative lifestye movement. They have moved on from that lifestyle and no longer use drugs. I don’t buy into Jonny’s unsubstantiated claim that hippies have the power to vote anyone in or out of office or control any of the legislative process in Floyd County. Too many of the hippies grew out of the lifestyle and became what they once feared most: The establishment.
Doug, I wasn’t addressing you but everyone who has been writing here and beyond (regarding the social finger pointing). Regarding Stephanie Shortt, I think I made my point. And by the way, this has nothing to do with who is a friend of mine or not. I am not writing in defense or offense on this issue. I was simply pointing out two points that didn’t sit quite right with me. Thanks.
I believe Stephanie Shortt has done an excellent job since taking office. She has gotten convictions consistently in cases that I have followed. Whatever one believes about drug legalization, it is totally unrealistic to expect local law enforcement agencies and the local prosecutor to ignore someone who grows and/or distributes marijuana (especially in large quantities).
I am disappointed to hear about the use of asset forfeiture by the local authorities. I can agree with “don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time”, but taking real estate and other property that often has been paid for with legitimate funds and has a tangential relationship or no real relationship to illegal activity happens far too often with asset forfeiture laws. I am unaware of the Patrick Fenn case and how the property was related to the growing and sale of marijuana. I do know that the risk of asset forfeiture has influenced some to grow marijuana on federal land or on rural land that is unoccupied rather than risk losing their own property. As long as there is demand the growing will continue in some form.
…it is subject to seizure.
In this case, the marijuana was apparently cured inside the home, which makes the home vulnerable.
For those opposed to asset forfeiture, here is a campaign against it from DownSizeDC.
The site has other campaigns to cut government spending, preserve local farming, repeal Real ID, end Bailouts, and more. Their “Read the Bills Act”, “Enumerated Powers Act” and “One Subject at a Time Act” are particularly interesting. So if drugs aren’t your thing, but Liberty is, check these others out.
Doug,
With all due respect, I predict that marijuana will be legalized everywhere in the United States some time in the next decade.
You might not like it, and I respect your views, but take that to the bank. Pot will no longer be illegal for several reasons, not the least of which is that it will become obvious to everyone, including the most die-hard prohibitionist doomsayers, that enforcement isn’t working, and that the “war on drugs” is a failure of epic proportions.
Furthermore, the medicinal uses of pot are well documented, and the weed serves well where other meds fail.
Last but not least, the hemp economy is needed, and legalization of hemp cultivation will be railroaded by the big ag corps once they finally realize that society views the non-recreational uses of the plant as a boon to a sagging economy.
But even though the industrial hemp plant is a distant relative to its “weaponized” Berkeley cousin, it will nevertheless provide the final chink in the rusting armor of the decades old anti-pot groups, many of whom find their roots in the liquor companies to begin with.
Alcohol prohibition failed. So will pot prohibition.
It’s not a question of if, but when…it’s just taking longer because we’re not as smart as we were seventy some years ago.
And Doug, with all due respect, your dear friend wasn’t killed because a careless driver smoked some weed.
He was killed because a driver who makes stupid choices with weed could have just as easily made the same stupid choice with anything, be it weed, booze, or just looking down to read a text message from his best girl.
Asset forfeiture, and end run around the Constitutional protections afforded to flesh and blood citizens of the United States of America.
When the settled law is deemed insufficient to punish the lawbreaker, jurisdictions use a tool that provides them with the means to sidestep prohibitions against abuse of due process.
The justice system presumes that a citizen is “innocent until proven guilty” but no such protection is afforded inanimate objects such as property, therefore it is easy to charge the object with a crime, and in the case of asset forfeiture the object is presumed “guilty until proven innocent”.
Thus, a car has committed a crime and it is impounded, thus a house committed a crime and it is auctioned off, with proceeds going to the coffers of the jurisdiction, and in cases like the tiny town of Tenaha, Texas, sometimes directly into the pockets of the judge, jury and executioners themselves.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenaha,_Texas#Police_seizures_scandal
We haven’t come too far since the days of the witchhunts. Sometimes the cost to recover property seized unjustly is more than the value of the property itself, and because seizures take place merely by charges being filed, it’s usually pointless to bother with a trial, either for the accused or their property.
Obviously we haven’t come too far since the days of the Black Hand, either.
But it’s all good…just be sure to sit down and have a nice long chat with your property, and tell it to watch its back.
only has to be ACCUSED of being used for production and distribution. The mere accusation of such by law enforcement is enough to trigger asset forfeiture proceedings. There is no requirement that the local governmental entity PROVE anything at all.
If a judge or a police chief gets it into their head that they want a piece of property taken, they file a brief or request a warrant, or one of their officers simply uses “probable cause”, and the property can be seized.
Yes, it IS that easy, and yes it IS that difficult to get your property returned if said governmental entity decides that they don’t want you to have it back.