Dismantling Prohibition
Wednesday, Jun 3, 2015 - Posted by Rich Miller
* A group of Protestant and Jewish religious leaders called Clergy for a New Drug Policy is lobbying for marijuana legalization in Illinois and several other states…
“It’s a primary change if something is decriminalized,” said the Rev. Al Sharp, the Chicago pastor who launched the group this spring. “The goal is to change the culture of punishment in this country, which the war on drugs has contributed so thoroughly and so devastatingly to.”
Sharp considers himself just as much a policy wonk as he is a pastor. As the former head of nonprofit agencies such as Protestants for the Common Good and the Community Renewal Society, groups founded as alternatives to the religious right, he has made lobbying for public policies such as more education funding and better housing his ministry. […]
When legislators in Springfield recently approved a bill to remove criminal penalties for simple marijuana possession, replacing the threat of jail time and a criminal record with a sanction similar to a traffic ticket, Sharp and his fellow clergy claimed victory.
If the bill is signed into law, Illinois will join 17 other states in decriminalizing the possession of small amounts of marijuana, according to the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML, a group that advocates the legal use of marijuana. Nearly half the country, including Illinois, already allows for the use of medical marijuana.
But without the support from groups on the Right, like the Illinois Policy Institute, this stuff was going nowhere.
* In related news, Ruth Marcus writes in WaPo about the Dennis Hastert indictment for attempting to evade currency reporting requirements and lying to the FBI…
The Hastert indictment raises questions even more gut-wrenching: about the proper use of the criminal law; the degree to which technical statutes should be employed to punish alleged conduct that is offensive but uncharged; and the role that celebrity and prominence should play in making prosecutorial decisions. […]
The Hastert indictment strikes me as a significantly more questionable call. If Hastert sexually abused a student when he was a teacher and wrestling coach, that conduct is repugnant; it should have been reported and prosecuted decades ago.
Now, it is too late for that. Instead, Hastert was tripped up by bank reporting requirements intended to catch drug kingpins and organized crime bosses. His alleged crime is that he structured his hush money withdrawals to avoid triggering reporting rules and then — seemingly on a single occasion — lied to FBI agents about why he was making the withdrawals. […]
Hastert did, it seems, a terrible thing. He is, or was, paying for it — literally. He shelled out $1.7 million “to compensate for and conceal his prior misconduct,” the indictment says. He is at once alleged perpetrator and victim of a shake-down scheme; his alleged victim is both prey and blackmailer.
* Let’s focus on the currency issue. From the indictment…
Title 31, United States Code, Section 5313(a) and Title 31, Code of Federal Regulations, Section 1010.310-313 required domestic financial institutions to prepare and file with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network a Currency Transaction Report (Form 104) for any transaction or series of transactions involving currency of more than $10,000.
Federal law also makes it a crime to attempt to evade this reporting requirement. So, if you consciously don’t want to deal with that reporting hassle and instead withdraw just $9,500 from your bank account, you can actually be charged with a felony.
First of all, that’s your money in your bank account. This is so invasive.
Secondly, the law was passed in the mid 1980’s, when $10,000 was worth less than half than it is today. The law was actually passed in 1970. So, $10K then would’ve been $60,979.12 in today’s dollars. That means our current limit is a mere 16.4 percent of what it was back then.
We’re eventually going to reach a point through the magic of inflation when $10K is a normal withdrawal for anybody in the middle class. [Adding: I withdrew cash before my extended trip to New Orleans and the bank flagged it for the IRS. I couldn’t believe my bank did it because it was nowhere near $10K.]
These sorts of drug prohibition-era penalities need to be repealed. Maybe Hastert’s indictment will finally wake up Congress.
