John Wright without a doubt speaks for the silent majority of Duke students, who smoke pot, have friends who smoke or know people who smoke without causing any harm to anyone except-arguably-themselves. The blatant violation of personal and civil liberties that our present system of law labels as the war on drugs is not only a lost war, but a war against the people of America.
The government wages this war against a large portion of the population that uses substances responsibly in the privacy of their residence without disturbance or harm to anyone.
While Duke and the
Duke University Police Department have no choice but to obey national law, they do have the choice in their enforcement of those laws and the allocation of police funds and time. We the students are not the only people who would rather see the police investigate rapists and rid the world of similar filth instead of tracking down someone taking a hit off his pipe in the evening to relax in a way no different than how one might have a beer after work.
For those who do not know, Nevada will have a referendum on their ballot this fall asking the people if they want possession of several ounces of marijuana legalized. While it may surprise some, the Police Chief's Union representatives unanimously (9-0) supported the referendum.
"We feel that our priorities should be changing," Andy Anderson, former president of the Nevada Conference of Police and Sheriff explained on MSNBC. "[Police] shouldn't be spending a lot of time making simple marijuana arrests. We should be out there using our time to address more serious incidents. We should free up a little more of our time."
There are better things police officers can be doing with their time.
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