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Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Friday that he has directed his federal prosecutors to pursue the most severe penalties possible, including mandatory minimum sentences, in his first step toward a return to the war on drugs of the 1980s and 1990s that resulted in long sentences for many minority defendants and packed U.S. prisons.
[...] In the later years of the Obama administration, a bipartisan consensus emerged on Capitol Hill for sentencing reform legislation, which Sessions opposed and successfully worked to derail.
In a two-page memo to federal prosecutors across the country, Sessions overturned former attorney general Eric H. Holder's sweeping criminal charging policy that instructed his prosecutors to avoid charging certain defendants with offenses that would trigger long mandatory minimum sentences. In its place, Sessions told his more than 5,000 assistant U.S. attorneys to charge defendants with the most serious crimes, carrying the toughest penalties.
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Memorandum on Department Charging and Sentencing Policy - US Department of Justice PDF
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday May 17 2017, @01:50AM (2 children)
Actually, my point was that tax goes into the public purse, bribes go straight into their pockets. Would you rather someone give you $1000 or donate $10,000 to the IRS?
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday May 17 2017, @12:57PM (1 child)
I think you're right on the small scale, but I was thinking in those shoes I'd rather be granted the no-bid, $50 million contract to be exclusive supplier of medical marijuana to the Colorado State Health System, all nice and legal-like. Why bother with fighting the law when you can use it, to eliminate your competitors and such?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Thursday May 18 2017, @12:35AM
Yes, good point, but...
1/ That no bid $50M contract is one supplier, some legislators and a few bureacrats getting kickbacks vs the entire entrenched police/prison/pharmaceuticall inductries all making heaps off of it being illegal. They aren't fighting the law.
2/ It is very easy to grow and prepare your own. No matter how low the co-pay, if it was legal many more people would simply grow their own, (and also be more generous to their friends who for some reason can't).
3/ Follow the money. I don't use it, so I don't know the exact price, but for any agricultural product that grows like a weed, to be sold for $$ per ounce, some-one is making a killing. Two killings really, as if it was legal it would displace a lot of expensive prescription meds.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.