Remember, marijuana is ‘bad’. Build those prisons!

How can one not be enraged? How can one not be educated by this?

An eighteen-year-old Floridian is pulled over for riding a bike without a night light. A small amount of marijuana is found on him. He is thus in violation of probation for a crime he committed years before as a juvenile. He is arrested and tossed in a jail cell. He suffers a medical emergency and spends hours vomiting and desperately screaming for help. More than six hours pass before he sees a nurse, by which time it is too late. He died a torturous death.

This is the result of one injustice piled atop another: the police searching someone for something to which police in a civilized society would likely respond with a friendly warning, marijuana possession triggering a probation violation that sends someone previously allowed to roam free into a jail cell, and a criminal justice system that is so cruel, overcrowded, and incompetent, that it allows its victims to suffer an unambiguous personal health crisis for hours before attending to them.

By Jymn

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