MARIJUANA POSSESSION SHOULD BE A CITATION, NOT A CRIME

After reading an article about Bainbridge Island's lack of a statute
for possession of small amounts of marijuana, I was again disgusted
at the ignorance and lack of foresight and justice after I read on to
find what the alternative is for the system.

The fact that if you are arrested or pulled over and marijuana is
found, the police will book you then for having drug paraphernalia
because of the lack of a possession statute.

The problem with this is drug paraphernalia could mean anything when
law enforcement is reading your criminal history and be misconstrued
as dabbling in narcotic, which is not representative of the law that you broke.

The time has come for our government to see clearly that marijuana is
in no way as dangerous to society as alcohol is and has been for
hundreds of years, and that alcohol is so easy and legal to obtain
and abuse. Where is the intelligence behind this thinking?

I no longer smoke marijuana, but if my son, who is a sophomore in
college, came home to tell me about a big party he was planning to go
to where there would be no alcohol but an abundance of marijuana, I
would not only be relieved knowing that many of my fears would be
eliminated concerning drinking and driving, I would be happy no know
that no one would be harmed from the aftereffects of alcohol
poisoning, liver disease, death and so on.

The misconception that marijuana is a stepping stone to harder drugs
is minor when compared to the same statement with alcohol.

I firmly believe that Bainbridge should be pioneering in its
enactment of legislation making possession of marijuana "by an adult"
nothing more than a traffic citation. In that case it would be
punishable by no more than a fine, rather than the jail-clogging
current 90 days in jail.

Larry Droguett

Bainbridge Island