Liberal democrats in Oregon are on the verge of decriminalizing the use of Meth, cocaine and heroin, which they claim will reduce crime. Let’s decriminalize rape and bank robbery, too because if we do that crime stats will go down also. A second bill reduces penalties for possession of a small amount of these drugs as well as reducing the penalty for crimes committed to feed people’s drug habits.
That should be interesting because property crimes include burglary and robbery. Once the new bill is signed a man who steals because his children are hungry will get a much stiffer sentence than a man who steals for drugs. Yep, that will reduce crime all right.
The first of the two bills now headed to the governor’s desk, HB 2355, decriminalizes possession of the drugs so long as the offender has neither a felony nor more than two prior drug convictions on record, according to the Lund Report. The second, HB 3078, reduces drug-related property crimes from felonies to misdemeanors.
Republican State Sen. Jackie Winters claimed the war on drugs as it currently exists amounts to “institutional racism” due to how more frequently minorities are charged with drug crimes than whites.
“There is empirical evidence that there are certain things that follow race. We don’t like to look at the disparity in our prison system,” Winters said during a hearing. “It is institutional racism. We can pretend it doesn’t exist, but it does.”
The second bill reduces mandatory minimum sentences for many property crimes and also increases the number of previous convictions necessary for a felony charge. It provides $7 million in funding for diversion programs to help lower Oregon’s prison population.
Winters and other supporters of the bills argue the answer to America’s drug crisis is treatment, not prison time.
“It would be like putting them in the state penitentiary for having diabetes,” Democratic Rep. Mitch Greenlick told the Lund Report. “This is a chronic brain disorder and it needs to be treated this way.”
Right. There are many similarities between diabetics and drug users.
Dantheman
The bill is do stupid ypu didn’t have to tell me it was sponsored by Democrats.