Quote from trefoil:
As I'm pretty sure this is a result of the drug war, I do have a pretty good idea what goes on, although thankfully no one I know has been affected by it, yet.
I'm for the legalization of all drugs, period. As far as I'm concerned, this whole drug war thing is a stupid mistake that has to end.
As for me, I keep as far away from law enforcement as I can. I have no illusions not only about what they can do, but about which side my fellow citizens will take in any his word vs mine confrontation in a court of law.
But there's no defense against the fact that citizens will take the word of a cop over that of a defendant. As far as I know, it's an unavoidable risk of a jury system.
The fact they're allowed to confiscate everything an accused person in a drug case owns is a travesty, and a trampling of the Constitution. That's something that needs to be struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
For some reason I'm not too in tune with, Americans walk around in fear all the time. This country overall is by far one of the safest places to live there is; my house has no alarms, we almost never lock any of the doors, and pretty much the only thing between us and a burglar is one very tame 40 pound mutt who's more likely to lick a burglar to death than anything else.
But very large portions of the population live in deathly fear of some weird bogeyman coming along and taking all they have. That fear is what makes things like the Patriot Act and the crap done under the guise of the drug war possible. I don't know how you exorcise that out of this country. I think part of it comes from too many nights watching pro-fascist shows like Cops and Twenty Four.
