Last Month I went To a Concert

[bigdt87]

Last month, I went to a concert. It was a good concert, playing was the arcade fire and the shins. Two very good indie rock bands. At this concert, I had decided to smoke some good ole' mary jane, to better increase the sensory input of the fabolous "Girl Inform Me", and "The Crown Of Love". the tetra-goodness succeeded in giving me a funner time listening to the music. Today, I drove to work so I could have money to pay taxe's and bills, and as I was driving there, I happened to spot an attractive female gracing the concrete sidewalks, and as i was licking the eye candy, i rammed right into the back of a ford escort. It wasnt too fun. And now, under a new michigan state law, that hit of weed i took last month has cost me a charge of being under the influence of a class 1 scheduled drug, marijuana, and causing property damage and injury.

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/441/michigan.shtml

(btw, that didnt really happen to me, it happened to some other person tho)



I must say, if michigan elects the repucliban candidate for governor this year, dick devos, ill say fuck michigan, im going to canada.

[Hermy]

This is the equivilent of getting a DUI for the beer cans in your garage. Eventually the non-potheads are gonna run out of money to take care of the rest of us when we can't work, drive, and half of us are in jail. It's just making criminals out of good working folks.

BTW Feiger's legitimacy as a candidate>Dicks. I love how the dems are just sitting on thier hands so they can sting this guy right before the election.

[Uncle Mxy]

This one intrigues me.

About 7-8 years ago, I sat on a jury trial where the charge was "under the influence of a combination of alcohol + a controlled substance" (in this case, cocaine and a VERY low blood alcohol content). It was downright hysterical watching the police scientist explain that "uhhh, we don't know the effects of cocaine on driving performance is". I kept resisting this urge to tell the poor scientist testifying to "have a coke and a smile and shut the fuck up!" (from Eddie Murphy: Raw, back when he was funny). The particular law in question is new, added under the Granholm administration by a Republican legislature without much dissent by any side of the equation, so everyone should check their political hangups at the door on this one. Instead, go read the actual opinion and dissent at:

http://courtofappeals.mijud.net/docu...r3jan06-op.pdf

It's yet another amusing catfight among the justices and written in relatively plain English. It might be worse than portrayed in the article. If the science cited in the dissent is to be believed (and indeed, no one on either side has really questioned any of the science presented in the case), second-hand marijuana smoke is enough to violate the law as it's been interpreted. The definitions involved are ambiguous, so the majority cherry-picked definitions that best support their positions, without factoring in common sense or prior art/stare decisis.

Really, apart from the "should marijuana be illegal at all" debate, the problem is structural. The "operating while intoxicated" statute has a newly-added part in it that isn't specifically about intoxication. We now have a class of called "DUI laws" that have nothing to do with DUI. These laws haven't been thought through with respect to the actual science that was involved. The Michigan Supreme Court thinks that's hunky-dory, which is no better or worse than a majority of folks from the other two government branches thinking it was hunky-dory when the laws were passed.

In other words, most everyone is stupid. Say Yes To Michigan!