Word: marijuana
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Social scientists note that punishment, to deter, must be immediate and impartial. During Prohibition, when enforcement of the Volstead Act was roughly comparable to that of the present drug laws, the nation's per-capita consumption of liquor actually increased 10%. The blunderbuss approach to marijuana creates widespread disrespect for all law among young people; perhaps worst of all, it makes it difficult for young people to believe adults' warnings about other drugs, and discourages the young who need medical help and advice from seeking...
...loosen the legal straitjacket, eight states recently have reduced the penalty for possessing marijuana from a felony to a misdemeanor, or given their judges the discretion of reducing it. Their action is in line with the recommendations of every national commission that has studied the subject since a White House conference on drug abuse in 1962?and directly opposite to the tack that the Nixon Administration is taking...
...sentencing proposals in the Administration's bill overrode the milder recommendations that had been agreed on by many officials in the departments of Justice and Health, Education and Welfare. The measure raises penalties for LSD, and keeps marijuana in the same classification as hard narcotics. The minimum jail sentence for a first offense would be two years. The bill's only concession permits a judge to release on probation first offenders who are found guilty and, if they behave properly, to dismiss them with a clean criminal record...
Nixon's proposed law doubtless reflects his intuition that most of the country still considers marijuana a strict law-and-order issue that can be dealt with by police
...defend a drug user?until he's their son," says Stanford University Psychologist Jean Paul Smith. However, the experts have become increasingly concerned over excessive drug penalties. Dr. Roger Egeberg, the Nixon-appointed Assistant Secretary of HEW for Health and Scientific Affairs, says that the laws governing marijuana "are completely out of proportion" to the dangers of the drug. Declared the Mental Health Institute's Dr. Yolles in his testimony last week: "I know of no clearer instance in which the punishment for an infraction of the law is more harmful than the crime...