Welcome to the Growery Message Board! You are experiencing a small sample of what the site has to offer. Please login or register to post messages and view our exclusive members-only content. You'll gain access to additional forums, file attachments, board customizations, encrypted private messages, and much more!
Everyone should be writing their Senators asking them to support this bill and/or asking what their what their stance is on this bill. I wrote both of my Senators.
For your convenience here is a page to get your Senators' contact info. You will get the option to write your own letter like I did or you can send a premade letter to them. At least take the 2 mintues it will take to send the premade letter, for the benefit of tokers everywhere.
Earlier this morning the United State’s Senate, Committee on Judiciary, unanimously approved Senate Bill 714, The National Criminal Justice Commission Act of 2009.
NORML first blogged about this federal legislation back in November, and encouraged NORML supporters to contact their U.S. Senators in favor of this long-needed reform. Fortunately, many of you did so, and today the Senate Judiciary responded accordingly.
As amended, Senate Bill 714 will establish a `National Criminal Justice Commission’ to hold public hearings and “undertake a comprehensive review of the criminal justice system, including Federal, State, local, and tribal governments’ criminal justice costs, practices, and policies. … The Commission shall make findings regarding such review and recommendations for changes in oversight, policies, practices, and laws designed to prevent, deter, and reduce crime and violence, improve cost-effectiveness, and ensure the interests of justice at every step of the criminal justice system.”
It’s been many years since a federally appointed commission has taken an objective look at American criminal justice policies, and it’s been nearly 40 years since federal lawmakers have undertaken a critical examination of U.S. drug policy. As affirmed by the bill’s chief sponsor, Democrat Senator Jim Webb of Virginia:
“America’s criminal justice system has deteriorated to the point that it is a national disgrace. … The United States has by far the world’s highest incarceration rate. With 5% of the world’s population, our country now houses nearly 25% of the world’s reported prisoners.
… Drug offenders, most of them passive users or minor dealers, are swamping our prisons. … Justice statistics also show that 47.5% of all the drug arrests in our country in 2007 were for marijuana offenses. Additionally, nearly 60% of the people in state prisons serving time for a drug offense had no history of violence or of any significant selling activity. … African-Americans — who make up about 12% of the total U.S. population population — accounted for 37% of those arrested on drug charges, 59% of those convicted, and 74% of all drug offenders sentenced to prison.
… It is incumbent on our national leadership to find a way to fix our prison system.”
NORML supporters can play a role in this ‘fix’ by contacting their U.S. Senators and urging them to support Senate Bill 714, The National Criminal Justice Commission Act. (Note, the measure must still be approved by the full Senate, and then the House of Representatives, before it can become law.)
unanimous support in committee is fucking wonderful! It gives us hope. it sickens me how many hoops have to be jumped through in order to improve and make the system more efficient.
You cannot start new topics / You cannot reply to topics HTML is disabled / BBCode is enabled
Moderator: geokills 2,056 topic views. 0 members, 75 guests and 17 web crawlers are browsing this forum.
[ Show Images Only | Sort by Score | Print Topic ]
Threaded
Previous
Index
Next
Edit 
Reply 
