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Comment by bobby_9x | Hacker News Reader

"Latinos are incarcerated at 1.5x the rate of whites, blacks 3x as much, despite drug use being equal across the board"

These studies are flawed. They are based on the person telling the truth about their drug usage.

"Do we call those who grew and sold pot to feed their families entrepreneurs, are they idolized in think pieces?"

What about the people that sell guns to feed their families?

"The entire industry has been whitewashed and is still prey to the same racist fears that spurred its prohibition in the first place."

You must be smoking weed, because this is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Nobody is still attributing weed to only non-whites.

Look at how weed is characterized in movies and TV: white, dopey, college kids.

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> You must be smoking weed, because this is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.

It's not ok to be uncivil on Hacker News. We ban accounts that do this repeatedly, so please don't do this.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11120194 and marked it off-topic.

>What about the people that sell guns to feed their families?

If someone sold guns when they were illegal and then jailed and then guns made legal, I would say they were wronged by society and should be released from their incarceration.

>Look at how weed is characterized in movies and TV: white, dopey, college kids.

Exactly - whitewashing. Marijuana usage is marketed as fun and carefree while ignoring the reality that many, many people are still in jail for crimes that are now business plans.

My whole point is that a large amount of those who were essentially the marijuana industry prior to its legalization are minorities who are disproportionally jailed and the industry is now run by mostly white people who get to reap the rewards. Legalization is seen as a win for personal liberty yet there are still so many in jail.

I would like to see a startup / org that worked towards social justice for these prisoners using the money earned from legalized weed sales.

The logical conclusion of this line of thought is that Al Capone should have walked free when prohibition ended. I can't support that.

Repealing mandatory minimums and revising sentences is something I could get behind. Not because marijuana law has changed, but because they were given unjust sentences in the first place.

> The logical conclusion of this line of thought is that Al Capone should have walked free when prohibition ended.

The principle "if one in jail for an offense which is later legalized, one should be released" would only lead to freeing Capone with the end of prohibition if tax evasion were legalized at that time, which it was not.

If, instead, the principle "if one in jail because one was prosecuted for an offense other than the one primarily motivating the government to seek to jail you because they had insufficient evidence for the offense that is the prime motive, and the offense that is the prime motive for the government seeking to jail you -- even if it is not the one you were convicted of -- is legalized, then you should be released for jail", well, then Capone would only be released with the end of prohibition if murder were legalized at that time.

I don't think any principal which would lead to Al Capone being released when prohibition ended was either proposed or implied upthread.

That seems more like a technicality of the example I chose than some deep-seated principal of justice.

Besides, do most modern day drug dealers accurately report their earnings to the IRS? Would you actually support prosecutors who aimed to convict drug dealers on on tax fraud because they knew you were about to pardon all drug offenses?

> The logical conclusion of this line of thought is that Al Capone should have walked free when prohibition ended. I can't support that.

Al Capone was famously only convicted of tax evasion, so I'm not sure this is relevant. And bootlegging wasn't what made him "Public Enemy #1", it was the violence he used to run his gang. Those actions would still be crimes without prohibition.

The US is fairly unique among Western countries in that the repeal of a law doesn't automatically end the sentences of people convicted of breaking it (AFAIK - this came up here on HN in the last few months).

Al Capone did plenty of illegal things beyond distributing alcohol: murder, racketeering, etc. If he had merely sold booze like so many others I would argue there is no wrong in letting him walk free post prohibition.

And yes I agree with you wholeheartedly that the sentences were unjust in the first place. It is my hope that legalization will steer people to reconsider the excessive harshness and implicit racial bias of drug laws e.g. crack cocaine users receiving larger sentences than those caught with powder.

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