“Crucifying” the “Other”

On April 1^st, Business Council Director Eric E. Sterling was published in the Huffington Post. Sterling draws parallels between the attitudes of policymakers that targeted the societal outcasts of a generation ago (e.g. gays and lesbians) and contemporary targets – marijuana users. Thirty years ago gays and lesbians were consigned to punishment, disease and exclusion.

In testimony before the Maryland House of Delegates last week, Sterling was debating Delegates who opposed reducing criminal penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana to a civil offense. One delegate wanted to punish marijuana users with loss of jobs and college eligibility because he had concluded marijuana users no longer feared being jailed. These criminal convictions have no positive effect on reducing the rate of drug use, but they devastate the lives of millions of Americans who can’t get good paying jobs, becoming a drag on the entire economy.

The economic consequences of copious criminal convictions for drug offenses include decimating family earnings, obstructing economic mobility, and reducing corporate profits and expansion. With one conviction, one marijuana user is hurt with a lifetime of economic challenge. With almost a million marijuana convictions every year, our entire economy faces depressed earnings, lost consumption and lost profits in the hundreds of billions, and almost every investor and retiree suffers.

Read the entire article here.