By Dan Martin
Filed Tuesday, May 15, 2007 at 11:07 AM
The latest bill in Missouri's war on drugs would make distributing controlled substances in a park a specifically defined offense, punishable by up to life in prison. Labels: State_Senate
Senate Bill 107, sponsored by Senator Yvonne Wilson, would create a specific crime entitled "distribution of a controlled substance near a park." Such unlawful distribution or delivery either on, in, or within 2,000 feet of a public or private park would become punishable as a class A felony.
According to the Missouri Attorney General's Office website, a class A felony is punishable by a sentence of 10-30 years or life in prison. For comparison, other class A felonies are crimes such as second-degree murder and first-degree robbery.
Critics of the bill find the level of punishment startling for such a broadly defined crime. In addition, they say the bill does not directly combat drug dealing, but merely pushes it out of parks and into other locations.
13 Comments:
"within 2,000 feet of a park" Good luck findng a spot in an urban area that isnt near a park. So now if I smoke pot in my home I go to jail for life. Thanks Sen. Wilson.
5/15/2007 2:37 PM
So, men who batter women get out in days or months, but these people go to jail for life. Once again, Missouri priorities are totally screwed.
5/15/2007 3:50 PM
Hey! Draconian penalties have a record of success so we must expand their scope.
5/15/2007 3:58 PM
If you learn how to read anon 1, it's not possession, it's dealing.
5/15/2007 4:53 PM
matt,
look up the definition of dealing. If I share my joint with a friend it could be considered dealing. no transfer of money is required.
5/15/2007 8:12 PM
anon is right, and you don't need to stretch the definition of dealing. The bill specifically says or deliver. But its all for the Chillllllldren, of course.
t
5/15/2007 10:13 PM
You never made mention of even passing it. You have to be caught anyway, and the odds of being caught within your home are quite low unless you are dealing. In that case, I don't give a shit about you anyway.
Personally, I have no opinion either way.
5/15/2007 10:28 PM
Switch from parks to schools and I think it's a great proposal.
5/16/2007 11:21 AM
Oh, great day! Life? That's outrageous! Unless Missouri is going to expand that to include drug makers like Pfizer and Tyco, we need to protest. We have more to worry about in this narrow-minded red state than these little clockers dealing in the parks. Why is no one going after the intelligence agencies and the covert military missions that aid and support the shipment of drugs from Bolivia and Pakistan all the way to the streets of country-ass Saint Louis? These little 10-buck clockers are not the problem. That crap is not grown in Missouri city parks.
5/16/2007 4:49 PM
Right which is why I think putting street level dealers in jail for 30 years or more is draconian. They don't own the ships or plans that allows the product to get here.
5/16/2007 5:22 PM
Another example of home grown Mo. fascism. Wife batterers receive a 'get out of jail free' card--and someone who has some pot '2000 feet within a park' receives life in prison! Sen. Wilson sounds like another hysterical 'church lady' bent on forcing everyone to her way of thinking. I don't need or want a 'nanny state', I can make my own decisions. Time to back a ballot initiative to pass a law permitting the RECALL OF LEGISLATORS IN THIS STATE. Never have I witnessed such arrogance as these stupid yahoos passing every wet dream thought they ever had--and calling it law. Just because you write it--doesn't make it justice or even constitutional. Time for the public to put these self serving toadies in their place. ANY PUBLIC ELECTED OFFICIAL SHOULD BE HELD TO THE POSSIBILITY OF THE CITIZEN RECALL. Let's get those petitions moving!
Politically Inclined
5/17/2007 10:51 AM
"Switch from parks to schools and I think it's a great proposal."
Let me get this right: you'd be willing to put someone else's kid away for the better part of his adulthood because your rotten kid most wittingly and willfully purchased a dime-bag of weed at school. Yet you find it okay that Big Pharma has completely invented a fake ailment(ADHD), and purchased your rotten kid's administrative psychologist so that this academic pathocrat can grow the bottom line of Big Pharma by prescribing a dangerous long poly-carbon chained chemical substance to your kid, a chemical whose caustically lethal side effects far outnumber by nearly one thousand fold the drug's intended benefits. I'll bet you are the type of "good" parent who fall prey to all those glossy drug ads on television that numbs the mind to the point of psychotic hypochodria for ailments better cured with an aspirin and a nap. You think hosting a teenage drink-athon is better, allowing him to preforate his liver irreparably at home, right? You give your kid every pill some Big Pharma bought-and-bossed doctor prescribes, no matter what the danger is. When your rotten kid gets hooked on prescription pills, cough syryp, and intravenous boluses of concoctions, the contents of which can dissolve the nose cone of a space shuttle, these doctors and Big Pharma get a free pass. Yet, the tenth grader who wants new scooters and designer jeans is demonized because your rotten brat sought him out and very deliberately used the money he took from your purse on his way out the door that morning to purchase a couple of Red Gold hooters.
How much crack, meth, and mescaline in a single hallucinagenic cocktail does a "good" parent have to do to come to this conclusion?
5/17/2007 2:49 PM
I'm with you, penny, whoever you are. These paranoid parents get on my nerves too. The drug and booze factories support all these foul politicians. But, they only come after black folks. That is so foul.
5/17/2007 3:21 PM
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