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On July 27, the administration of President Biden supplied their Russian counterparts a deal: Launch WNBA participant Brittney Griner and alleged U.S. spy Paul Whelan, in return for the U.S. releasing Russian arms seller Viktor Bout.
Griner, at present on trial, faces a 10-year sentence if convicted of possessing hashish. She was arrested at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Worldwide Airport on Feb.17 after officers allegedly discovered vape cartridges containing “hash oil” in her possession.
I’d personally wish to see Griner launched. I believe most People agree with me. However the political outrage over her arrest feels fairly manufactured provided that tons of of 1000’s of People get handled like Griner yearly by their very own governments.
Despite the fact that a super-majority of People assist legalization of marijuana, and although quite a few states have moved in that course on each medical and leisure use, the Heart for American Progress reviews that U.S. legislation enforcement companies nonetheless make greater than 600,000 marijuana arrests yearly. At any given time, tens of 1000’s of People languish behind bars for the very “crime” Griner stands accused of in Russia.
There’s little doubt that marijuana is profitable, and was at all times going to win, the “battle on marijuana.”
The one winners in that “battle” have been black market drug sellers, legislation enforcement budgets, and opportunistic politicians.
Everybody else loses. Not simply marijuana customers. Non-user taxpayers should not solely foot the invoice, however put up with the chance that they and their members of the family and associates could, at any second, undergo police harassment and search on suspicion of harboring the satan weed of their automobiles, properties, blood or urine.
The US authorities cares about Brittney Griner as a result of she’s a star who’s been arrested by America’s Enemy of the Week.
If she’d been one in every of us nobodies and had been arrested wherever else on the earth — together with within the U.S. itself — she’d have been simply one other quantity within the battle on marijuana’s ugly casualty statistics. We’d have by no means seen her title exterior of native police blotter and court docket reportage.
That doesn’t imply she ought to go to jail. She shouldn’t. However neither ought to anybody else, wherever, go to jail for possession of a useful plant.
Deliver Brittney Griner house … and ship her U.S. counterparts house, too. Launch them from America’s prisons, expunge their convictions, finish the battle on marijuana, and allow them to — and the remainder of us — get on with our lives with out additional ado.
Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior information analyst on the William Lloyd Garrison Heart for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism. He lives and works in north central Florida.
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