NORML Blog, Marijuana Law Reform » probation http://blog.norml.org Working to reform marijuana laws Fri, 19 Mar 2010 17:45:28 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 Middle-Class, Baby Boomer Couple’s Nightmare: Grow Five Pot Plants…Have Your Life Turned Upside Down By Prohibition http://blog.norml.org/2008/04/11/middle-class-baby-boomer-couple%e2%80%99s-nightmare-grow-five-pot-plants%e2%80%a6have-your-life-turned-upside-down-by-prohibition/ http://blog.norml.org/2008/04/11/middle-class-baby-boomer-couple%e2%80%99s-nightmare-grow-five-pot-plants%e2%80%a6have-your-life-turned-upside-down-by-prohibition/#comments Fri, 11 Apr 2008 16:38:03 +0000 Allen St. Pierre, NORML Executive Director http://blog.norml.org/2008/04/11/middle-class-baby-boomer-couple%e2%80%99s-nightmare-grow-five-pot-plants%e2%80%a6have-your-life-turned-upside-down-by-prohibition/ 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).

Every 38 seconds in the United States a citizen is arrested on cannabis-related charges (88% for simple possession), and today, the Haver’s of Reading Pennsylvania, join the nearly 20 million Americans since 1965 who’ve been convicted on pot a charge.

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The Haver’s case should make it clear: America’s cannabis policy causes more harm than cannabis!

Please support NORML’s law reform advocacy efforts to pass cannabis laws that recognize it should not be a crime in 2008 for a professional, middle-aged, tax-paying couple to grow a few pot plants in America.

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