It’s no secret that Oregon has a bit of a funding problem. Public programs involving education, insurance and so on are losing steam as lawmakers in Salem and voters around the state continually show an extreme dislike for taxes.
The most recent example of these harms was reported Wednesday, by the Register-Guard. According to the Register-Guard, Lane County district attorneys
will not prosecute more than 100 nonviolent misdemeanors such as car break-ins and credit card fraud. Instead, public lawyers will focus on crimes such as domestic violence, high scale robberies and drug dealing.
Unfortunately, this is just another example of how the U.S. government’s drug war forces individual communities to ignore crimes that should take higher legal priorities. Instead of making sure people who break into cars are taken off the street and punished, prosecutors will use state funds to make sure the local stoner isn’t assisting his neighbors in eating lots of food and forgetting stuff.
Not that drug dealing is a small matter. Some substances, such as PCP, pose serious danger to both drug users and innocent bystanders. Anyone who sells drugs that directly threaten society deserves
to be prosecuted at the most severe
level possible.
The sale of some drugs, however, should simply be a lower priority to the government than breaking into someone’s car. The federal government recognizes marijuana as more dangerous than
cocaine, which is legal for some medical use, while marijuana is a Schedule I drug and represents one of America’s worst outdated policies.
Marijuana is a surprisingly mild drug. It is usually not chemically altered, it is much less addictive than most drugs, and it has been used medicinally for thousands of years. Also debatable is the government’s need to regulate its citizens’ substance use in the first place.
Of course, when money runs low, the need to make marijuana a primary public concern at the expense of prosecuting people who use stolen credit cards is totally irrational. As far as violent tendencies go, one should assume that a criminal who breaks into or uses another’s personal property is certainly more dangerous than someone who sells a drug that the majority of the population has
admitted trying.
The real shame is that Oregon must make choices regarding which criminals deserve to be reprimanded for their actions. Until Oregon lawmakers can figure out how to appease voters and fund public services, Salem should seriously evaluate its standards of community safety.

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