Georgia Rep. Tommy Benton (R-Jefferson) favors “caning” and “executions” for marijuana crimes

This just in from a Georgia Stasher as part of our ongoing series called Politicians on Pot, where listeners send in replies from their elected officials regarding marijuana law reform.

Thanks for the email. We will have to agree to disagree on this and whether or not money is wasted. I am opposed to the legalization of marijuana. I think we should go to caning for people caught using and maybe execute dealers. That would solve the problem as well. That is what they do in Singapore and they don’t have a drug problem, but then they have less liberty than we do here.

Rep. Tommy Benton
tommy.benton@house.ga.gov

Isn’t it amazing how much of the Constitution an elected official is willing to throw away for the Drug War Exception?  Here’s the Wikipedia entry on Singapore’s drug laws:

The law creates a presumption of trafficking for certain threshold amounts, e.g. 30 grams of cannabis. It also creates a presumption that a person possesses drugs if he possesses the keys to a premises containing the drugs, and that “Any person found in or escaping from any place or premises which is proved or presumed to be used for the purpose of smoking or administering a controlled drug shall, until the contrary is proved, be presumed to have been smoking or administering a controlled drug in that place or premises.” Thus, one runs the risk of arrest for drug use by simply being in the company of drug users. The law also allows officers to search premises and individuals, without a search warrant, if he “reasonably suspects that there is to be found a controlled drug or article liable to seizure”.

So if you don’t mind sacrificing essential liberty, if you’re cool with cops searching you and your property on mere suspicion or being considered guilty because you happened to be in a night club where someone unknown to you got caught sniffing coke in the restroom, or if you think it’s reasonable to execute someone for possessing 1.06 ounces of pot, you can have a relatively drug-free society.

The United States per-capita rate of drug crimes is 41st out of 60 countries surveyed by NationMaster.com at 560.1 per 100,000.  Singapore ranks near the bottom at #53 with a rate almost 1/12th that of America, or 46.8 per 100,000.  Yet Spain, with its fairly liberal drug laws, ranks #56 in the survey with only 27.9 drug offenses per 100,000.  That 30 grams of cannabis that gets you the hangman’s noose in Singapore isn’t even a crime in Spain and neither is buying and selling of seeds and cultivating up to five plants.

Now, certainly you’re going to have a lower rate when many of the “crimes” aren’t being counted (Spain has similar personal possession decriminalization for other drugs as well), but does anyone think Spain has descended into chaos?  By all accounts it seems to be at least as nice a place as Singapore, even though they lock up in prisons 2.6 times fewer citizens for all crimes (per capita prisoners: Spain 146/100k (#61); Singapore 388/100k (#12)).  It is tough to compare, as Singapore is a city-state on an island and Spain and America are larger continental countries with both urban and rural areas.  However, regardless of crime rate, it is simply un-American to suggest that we should be whipping people to punish them for smoking a joint.