More insanity from the “War” on “Drugs”, as authorities in the US try to destroy the lives of high school kids:
Last year in three high schools in Florida, several undercover police officers posed as students. The undercover cops went to classes, became Facebook friends and flirted with the other students. One 18-year-old honor student named Justin fell in love with an attractive 25-year-old undercover cop after spending weeks sharing stories about their lives, texting and flirting with each other.
One day she asked Justin if he smoked pot. Even though he didn’t smoke marijuana, the love-struck teen promised to help find some for her. Every couple of days she would text him asking if he had the marijuana. Finally, Justin was able to get it to her. She tried to give him $25 for the marijuana and he said he didn’t want the money — he got it for her as a present.
A short while later, the police did a big sweep and arrest 31 students — including Justin. Almost all were charged with selling a small amount of marijuana to the undercover cops. Now Justin has a felony hanging over his head.
In the cops’ defence, there isn’t any actual crime in Florida that they could be solving.
Moved On 
Deplorable. As the article states, how do these cops look at themselves in the mirror? And all over a harmless (in moderation) plant that does less damage than more legal forms of addiction.
These cops need to get with the program. Drugs are every schoolkid’s right. US police should concentrate on real serious crime, follow the fine example of their UK counterparts and start arresting school kids for “hatespeech”. Not real hatespeech mind, just any little thing that sets off alarm bells in the mind of a lunatic raving banshee teacher and the idiot school administrators who have collectively overdosed on cultural sensitivity training. They should all do the world a favour and {EDIT – Oh, come on SB. I don’t have to publish that.}
LOL SplatterBottom! Thats such a great caricature of stupid, illogical, rabidly right-wing, racist bs! Very impressed that you managed to flip it on its head to bring in the always hilarious ‘pc thought police’ obsession that right-wing paranoid nutjobs so often embarrass themselves with! You should send a job application in to become a script writer for Colbert!
Snip away Jeremy. The blog is yours. I just supply quality copy from time to time, always at the editor’s discretion.
PC be with you, glynnaaron.
Surely the story relayed above is a straightforward case of entrapment?
The US has quite strong laws in that regard and if “Justin’s” story is as it has been presented then he’s got a clear defence.
Having said that – what a phenomenal waste of police resources. Going undercover to bust teenagers for smoking pot? Some elements of the US have their priorities so far out of whack it’s ridiculous.
This case is a great example of how entrapment perhaps should work, but I doubt it will. Entrapment as a defense almost always fails – it is widely known of as a defense due to TV but what you don’t see is the courts balancing the the public interest of conviction vs the public interest in police acting with proper conduct. ‘Very unsavoury conduct’ as put by one US judge will not be sufficient. All the police need is reasonable grounds from their point of view at the time with their intel (not hind sight in other words) and the prosecution will prevail.
And on that note, the issue of drugs in schools and the availability / supply is a serious one. This is obviously one strategy being used to combat it. I’m not sure I would want to be so fast to judge the antics of police without the full set of information (I never trust the media, so do not trust this source who is clearly sympathetic to the students, notwithstanding that it could be entirely accurate).
How would those here that were so quick to judge the police (without, mind you, having both sides of the story) tackle drugs in schools? Do you realise what drugs do to kids?
Education.
I’d believe their primary interest is the children’s well-being when they’re in there entrapping them with alcohol and cigarettes, both of which are vastly more harmful and addictive than marijuana. Heck, caffeine is probably more likely to harm than marijuana, and unquestionably more addictive.
Oh right, smithy, silly me, because it is not like a SCHOOL WOULD NOT HAVE THOUGHT OF EDUCATION. No, no how stupid.
You realise that drug/drug harm education is already in every curriculum (nicely crowding its way beside every other social ill that parents don’t want to take responsibility for).
Your views towards marijuana are uninformed (or informed by the pro-marijuana brigade who have mis-information down to an art). For example a recent report re: marijuna vs cigarettes was reported by the media as ‘occasional marijuana use found less harmful that cigarettes’ – but the actual report compared one a month use of marijuana with chain smoking. Well once a month smoking is less harmful than chain smoking too. The harm of alcohol and cigarettes due to legality/availability should be testament to how harmful marijuana would be if it were legal.
To compare the harm from caffeine (negligable albeit very addictive) and marijuana (all the harms of unfiltered cigarettes plus wonderful psychotic elements plus mis-information so ppl use it when they shouldn’t thinking it is safe) is to show the most gross ignorance or gross negligence I’ve ever heard.
Schoolchildren take drugs? I’m shocked, shocked,, I tell you!
So shocked I used two commas.
Heh. They’re mere children compared to the architects of The War on Some Drugs.
This merely reflects reality. Chain-smokers are a dime a dozen (because it’s a phenomenally addictive drug). Hardly anyone does that with Marijuana (because it’s not).
A link to a source would be nice when you’re going to make claims like that, as well.
Er, no. The harm of alcohol and cigarettes stems from the fact they’re harmful drugs. Easy accessibility may exacerbate the harm, but it does not create it.
Caffeine kills thousands of people a year. I’m not aware of marijuana having killed anyone, ever (which is not to say it’s never happened, but it’s not even playing the same game as most other drugs).
Humans take drugs. Most do it at least daily. It’s perfectly natural, normal and in the vast majority of cases, harmless, behaviour.
The best approach to drugs is decriminalisation, regulation, treatment for addiction (as a medical, not criminal, problem) and comprehensive, honest information about effects and risks. In countries where this is done (say, the Nordic countries) , the results are extremely positive. In countries where the opposite is done (say, Australian and America) the results are extremely negative.
Nearly all of the bad things that happen around illegal drugs, happen because they’re illegal.
Oh jeez. Tell it to the psych ward staff, that’ll get a laugh.
The data is finally starting to fall clearly on this one, too, IIRC – its not just a strong correlation but is in fact causation.
Just because the authorities tend to exaggerate outrageously the risks associated with the various illegal drugs, contrarians seem to take that as evidence that the drugs have few to no side effects at all.
Naturally! The drugs big pharma develop that must past stringent government regulations on safety are all KNOWN to have side effects, often of quite a serious nature – because that’s more or less the deal with ingested bio-active chemicals.
But the unregulated drugs are clearly side effect free, by the power of government-being-wrong-overriding-regular-principles-of-biochemistry.
They’ll probably get a laugh if you try and tell them caffeine has no psychological effects as well.
This is what’s called a straw man.
Uh, what ?
Humans have been partaking in mind- and body-altering substances since the beginning of known history – for both recreation and medicinal purposes – and observations of primates and other animals suggest they were doing so long before that as well (eg: lemurs getting high on millipede poison).
Which aspect of drug use are you suggesting is _not_ natural ? Which group of humans can you identify that never, ever, use any form of drug for any purpose ?
As in “behaviour indulged in” without any sort of external coercive force. Ie: something people do voluntarily when given the opportunity. Like, say, having sex or eating meat.
Yes. That would be the “in the vast majority of cases” part of my statement.
Simple fact is nearly everyone uses some drug on a near daily basis. Caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, aspirin, paracetamol, etc. The vast, vast majority of them suffer no ill effects – short or long term – from doing so.
Wow. Did you really just argue that the majority of people should not be able to do something that might potentially be dangerous to a tiny minority ?
Can we conclude from this you believe, say, cars should be illegal because some people are bad drivers ?
Yes. Just like I said.
Do they have compulsory religious education classes in Florida state schools?
Maybe if they did, NONE of this other stuff would happen …
hey all, long time no see.
Pot is less condusive to psychosis than living in a modern society (imo obviouisly), but is it more condusive to craziness and harm to self and others than alcohol or tobacco? What about meta studies that question the causation link between cannabis and psychosis or that show a link between pot and increased neural functioning in some people with some mental illness?
And while there were no espresso shots on the savannah, there were shrooms in abundance – thats why we have such over developed language centres and invent stuff like computer code and funnily enough, espresso shots.
Its clear there are some people who shouldn’t consume pot, in the same way there are some people who shouldn’t drink booze, and others who shouldn’t watch television or drive, but anyone who makes definitive statements about pot causing mental illness in somne people is definitely making unsupported statements, at this stage anyway.
Anyway i thought 21 jump st was a bad fictional tv show, but obviously it was reality tv, and wtf is it with Florida. Getting cops to bust kids via obvious entrapment that has no value to society is bad enough, wasting resources in a place where human trafficking is epidemic is worse. I guess they think they have their priorities right.