The arrest and prosecution of a professional, baby boom couple in Pennsylvania helps underscore the genuine waste of taxpayer dollars and overall ineffectiveness of government to stop adult citizens who want to use cannabis, as well as highlight a well known, but underreported fact among millions of victims of cannabis prohibition laws: Punishment in the modern criminal justice system does not necessarily equate with incarceration so much as it does a series of expensive civil fines, taxpayer-funded probation and drug testing services, loss of student loans and employment (and, consequentially therein, income taxes to city and state coffers) and access to health care services (because of an arrest, cannabis offenders typically will go from paying for private health insurance to relying upon taxpayer-funded services or charities).

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