Injustice in Texas is apparently determined by weight
Regardless of how you feel about weed, legalization is pretty much around the corner most everywhere. Whether you smoke it, used to smoke it, never smoked it, hate it or whatever, it is as ubiquitous as just about anything else, and the fact that people are still being thrown in the can for extended sentences harshes everyone’s buzz, sober or otherwise.
The fact that people’s lives can still be thrown away on a technicality serves as continued proof that our justice system seems to find a way to harm more people than it helps.
Today, a young man by the name of Jacob Lavoro, 19, faces life in a Texas prison because he made a batch of pot brownies. He was arrested last month with a pound of weed, 1.5 pounds of the brownies, digital scales, cash, baggies of weed and 145 grams of hash oil.
The fact that he’s facing such a lengthy sentence is due directly to the way in which Texas chooses to prosecute drug offenders.
Because he used hash oil instead of regular bud, prosecutors have the option of aggregating the total weight of the brownies in the charge. That’s right, folks, his charges are based on how much the BROWNIES weigh, and this is coupled with hash oil carrying a heavier set of charges because it has a higher THC content than normal weed, since it’s concentrated.
Because of Texas’ strict, possibly arcane, laws, Lavoro automatically faces a felony charge that can lead to a life sentence.
This is the country that we live in. Say what you want about Texas’ laws, but the fact that a non-violent offender faces life in prison…life…that’s an issue that we all must be concerned about. The more conservative will say Lavoro had a choice, well be that as it may, prosecutors also have a choice, and it seems more and more that prosecutors are choosing to fill up prisons with people who probably shouldn’t be there for nearly as long as they’re routinely being placed there for.
So I ask you, which choice is worse?
You should think about that question especially hard, because if you think that lives should be thrown away over non-violent offenses, or over a substance that is becoming either decriminalized or outright legalized in a number of states, then that says more about you than the offender.
Justice shouldn’t be on a state-by-state basis. Lives shouldn’t be thrown under the bus in order to preserve an inflated sense of Law and Order. Breaking the law should be punished, but punishment should be handed out reasonably, not as a result of using technicalities to ensure the harshest judgment.
Until we get our head out of our asses about how we treat drug crime, especially weed, things will continually get worse before they get better.