And yet there are many, many people serving a decade or more in prison for possession of less.
There is no case to avoid drug law reform, disagree on the nature of what is required but /something/ needs doing. This bullshit where there is nothing like the rule of law and equality before it has to go. It's a cancer that eats away at society and however bad you think it is, it's actually a lot worse.
> Do you have evidence people are doing 10+ years where their only crime is possession of recreational amounts?
"only crime", a minor one at that, and three serious crimes don't match up, and is possession of recreational amounts a serious crime in any jurisdiction?
Yes. The whole point of three strikes laws were to make low-level drug offenses punishable by life in prison. It would be cruel and unusual punishment to do it for the first offense, so they made it happen after three, and the courts OKd it.
I'm going to need more than that as when I checked yesterday it was only felonies and what most people would think are actually serious crimes that were counted as strikes. The closest I could find to a "minor" crime was Rummel v. Estelle[1] where the offences totalled $230 of fraud, but the offences were felony fraud, so I couldn't find any sympathy for said fraudster, it actually reduced any possible sympathy - if you're going to do something that risky it should be for a big reward.
> If it's not a distribution-level amount of drugs I think police just don't give a fuck, especially in larger cities.
As someone who has a record over an ounce, lol.
Cops LOVE weed being illegal. Claiming to smell weed provides an easy path to justifying a search that vanishes when it becomes legal.
There are also a lot of states that have a laughably low threshold for personal use and anything above that is is legally considered to imply intent to distribute. This then opens the door for all kinds of seizures of vehicles, computer equipment, and most importantly cash in a backwards "guilty until proven innocent" scenario where the person doesn't even need to be charged with a crime to lose their property.
How I explain US federalism to Germans: in 2014, an amount of marijuana that could be purchased in a nice, state-regulated shop in Colorado by anyone over 21 years old could have gotten you a $100 fine in New Mexico, and up to 6 months in jail and a $2000 fine in Texas.
Not him but my friend has a record that he got last year over 0.06g (0.002116438 of an ounce, according to Google) of weed. At that amount it's less than an average breadcrumb but it was good enough to lock him up for a day and have his entire house searched.
