Judge Orders Man to Write Report on Why Medical Marijuana is Bad

I guess it’s better than sending them to jail, but forcing offenders to draft political opinions smacks of drug war brainwashing.

GARDNVERVILLE, Nev.—A Nevada judge has issued a homework assignment in the form of an unusual sentence for a 25-year-old Sacramento man who sold marijuana to a police informant in a casino parking lot at Lake Tahoe.

District Judge Dave Gamble ordered Matthew Palazzolo to write a report on what the judge called the "nonsensical character" of California's medical marijuana law.

Gamble gave Palazzolo 90 days to complete the paper discussing his self-admitted realization that marijuana was a gateway drug that led him to use more powerful narcotics.
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Palazzolo's attorney Derrick Lopez said the arrest and substance abuse treatment convinced his client he had a drug problem. [AP]

Well, it's a good thing they arrested him, otherwise he'd never have learned that doing drugs leads to problems like getting arrested. Of course, it's possible that Palazzolo had serious problems with drugs, but anyone who's arrested for a marijuana offense and tossed in front of a judge is liable to say something like that. No one goes in front of the judge and says they were selling pot to get money for fancy clothes.

So yeah, there are plenty of reports to be written about the "nonsensical character" of our marijuana laws, but California's policy of not arresting medical users isn't exactly where I'd begin.