POT PROPONENTS THANK PAT ROBERTSON FOR HIS FALLACIOUS COMMENTS

Liberal columnist Froma Harrop has offered her ‘profound thanks’ to televangelist Pat Robertson for making some fallacious comments on a recent Christian Broadcasting Network show. The televangelist told his worldwide audience that "We're locking up people who take a couple of puffs of marijuana, and the next thing they know, they've got 10 years." Robertson also claimed that ‘absurd laws’ forced judges to hand down mandatory sentences for just a couple of puffs on those joints.

Robertson is dead wrong on both counts and Froma Harrop and her ilk damn well know it. Nobody goes to prison for taking a couple of puffs of pot. The good reverent has been scammed by the proponents of pot. People are not serving time for the possession of just a few joints. Those that are imprisoned for ‘Possession of Marijuana’ were actually busted for sales or possession of substantial quantities of pot. The original sales or distribution charges were plea bargained down to simple possession in return for shorter prison sentences.

And what about those mandatory sentences for a couple of puffs that Robertson carped about? Where in the world did he ever come up with that one? If I didn’t know any better, I would think his broadcast studio had been full of people smoking pot so that poor old Pat got high on secondary smoke. Mandatory sentencing laws, for the most part, apply only to the federal court system where judges must follow certain sentencing guidelines for all serious felonies.

In her Tuesday column, ‘Waging War Against War On Drugs,’ Harrop first thanked Robertson. Then she rambled on about the billions of dollars wasted fighting the war on drugs and the billions it costs for DEA, state and local drug investigations, court trials and imprisonment. And, of course, she could not refrain from charging that racial minorities were disproportionately singled out for investigation, prosecution and incarceration. She also blabbered about the tax bonanza that would accrue from the legalization of marijuana, disregarding the fact that California’s de facto pot legalization (in the guise of medical marijuana) has failed to generate anywhere near the taxes the state and cities had expected to collect.

In waging their war against the war on drugs, Harrop and other prominent liberals were quick to grasp onto Robertson’s ridiculous statements. Since they knew full well that his comments were fallacious, they ought to be ashamed of themselves. But then the proponents of pot have no shame.