Fed up with prison overcrowding, the Texas legislature passes a law encouraging police to ticket rather than arrest people for small amounts of marijuana. And, wouldn’t you know it, police and prosecutors are ignoring it and fidgeting around rationalizing their determination to haul every pot smoker off to jail. Why? They consider it their job to overcrowd the prisons.

And as you might expect, we're told this is all necessary to protect the children:

For Greg Davis, Collin County's first assistant district attorney, one of his qualms with the new law is the perception created by ticketing for a drug offense, instead of making an arrest.

"It may... lead some people to believe that drug use is no more serious than double parking," Mr. Davis said. "We don't want to send that message to potential drug users, particularly young people." [Dallas Morning News]

It's not enough for Mr. Davis to brand them with criminal records that could haunt them for the rest of their lives. They must also suffer the indignity of being handcuffed and tossed in an overcrowded steel box full of dangerous thugs the moment they're found with marijuana. Surely, that will show them how much we care.

And while we're at it, double-parking really is a vastly more serious crime than having marijuana. If Americans double-parked at the same rate that they smoke pot, we'd be living a parking lot. Pizzas would be undeliverable. Productivity would generally suffer considerably.

At least the police in Austin are following the new policy, and for innovative reasons you might never even think of:

With the high price of gasoline, Mr. Wade said, writing citations also saves money because officers don't have to drive into Austin from the county's outskirts to put a suspect in jail.

Is that what these people care about? Do we have to start talking about trivial crap like gas mileage to stop marijuana arrests? I will if I have to, but damn…