Louisiana man receives 20 years for half an ounce of marijuana | Hacker News Reader

Louisiana man receives 20 years for half an ounce of marijuana

america.aljazeera.com

41 pointsramisms22 comments

Ugh. I read Aljazeera English fairly regularly a year ago, before Aljazeera America existed. I appreciated the solid-yet-concise reporting, the fact that there was little enough news that I could kind of read it all, and the fact that it wasn't as America-centric as I'm used to (nice change of perspective).

And now that they're trying to break into the US market, I see a page filled with tweets? I really hope that they don't think adopting CNN's "we'll just read a ton of tweets on air" strategy (which is what finally lead me to swear off CNN entirely) is how to win the US market. I was looking forward to them providing something a little more serious, kind of like NPR.

What is wrong with tweets? It's the future man... tweets are just replacing reporters on the streets getting opinions. Why go interview random people when you can just scrape twitter.

Aljazeera America is decidedly not Aljazeera English, but rather an intentionally dumbed down news station to "fit into the US cable news market." I love journalism, Al Jazeera is fantastic compared to most of the garbage consumed in the US, but what is happening is truly a tragedy.

A one paragraph description of a story with a Storify embed of a bunch of random reactions is also not journalism (unless the tweets have something interesting, unique or important to say).

I'm in the same boat as GP, is there a way to force it back to 'Ajazeera English' short of a VPN? Aljazeera America has made the site worthless for me.

More details here: http://www.alternet.org/drugs/27-year-old-man-gets-20-years-...

State law specifies a mandatory 20-year sentence for a third violation. Yes, locking him up for 20 years at a cost of about $500K is going to solve the problem.

It absolutely solves the problem. Unfortunately, the problem is how to make sure the prison and police industry is well-funded by tax dollars.

Deleted comment

>Unfortunately, the problem is how to make sure the prison and police industry is well-funded by tax dollars.

He's saying marijuana isn't the real "problem." The "problem" is making sure the various governmental-industrial complexes are maintained.

Right, read that completely wrong, thank you for clearing that up.

That is outrageous.

wow. It isn't even a "third strike" (ie. 2 violent/etc.. and the 3rd any sends you away for long) which is also pretty questionable law, it is just a "third toke". I'm wondering how about "cruel and unusual" here?

In California, this would be a fine that is currently less than half the price of the fine you'd pay for a jaywalking ticket.

Louisiana probably considers this a win, since they have contracts with the private prison industry that guarantees they imprison a minimum number of people.[1]

[1] http://www.shreveporttimes.com/viewart/20130920/NEWS01/13092...

The guarantee is also that the state would pay for the full shortfall of occupancy, for example in case the prisons are only 1% full then the state pays for the remainder.

For instance:

* given 1,500 expected occupancy, 96% is guaranteed by the state

* provided 50% actual occupancy, the remaining 46% is paid in full by the state

At a rate of $50K per inmate this translates into tens and hundreds of millions of dollars across the country -- paying for empty cells.

And in Washington, this would be 100% legal.

"Corey Ladd had prior drug convictions and his sentencing mentioned him as a "multiple offender,""

Slightly OT, but this article is a good example of why I respect Al Jazeera. The first section of the second sentence spells out exactly what the first objection to the headline might be, it doesn't try to bury this somewhere deep down in the article. Normally this sort of article would get lots of "This is so misleading" comments which do a disservice to the point.

OTOH, since they've given this story a hint of "What's up with crazy US laws?" framing, they might also point out that Qatar, where Al Jazeera is headquartered, has severe penalties for drug possession, like Louisiana and even worse, including the death penalty for drug trafficking.

actually my first question is his race and if he sports deadlocks being the second.

I was recently busted in Oregon with a similar amount of pot. My punishment was eight hours of community service.

It's curious that Law Enforcement Against Prohibition has such massive diversity of high ranking officials [0] that they have not yet moved the needle enough to bring the debate to a head.

Perhaps a massive ad campaign to make the insanity unambiguous in terms of human lives and cost (pictures of people behind bars and piles of money), and posit the question: Can't we do better? Paging Sir Branson.

http://www.leap.cc/about/who-we-are/

Another recent example of planned violence that only exists because of prohibition:

"2 U.S. Army veterans accused of plot to kill DEA agent"

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/09/27/ex-sold...

It's interesting that the majority of the article is based on the tweets of random people. Talk about user generated content.

2012 interview with LEAP's Neill Franklin on the failure of Mexico's #warondrugs strategy.

http://youtu.be/PELjksQMpnc

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