It always confuses me how, as a society, we seem to think that prison is for punishment, and rehabilitation is now 100% the job of the convict, then we act like they have not yet 'paid their debt to society' and should continue to be shunned and punished when they get out of prison. We need to look at other cultures that treat people differently, and actually look at WHY they offended in the first place, and try to remedy those issues during incarceration and make them proper, productive citizens. Our system of punish, punish more, then add some permanent punishments, all while expecting the offenders to 'pull themselves up by their bootstraps' (bootstraps that were taken from them in prison) and, while enduring punishment, better themselves is just insane. They'll never be the people we want them to be if we keep putting obstacles in their way.

Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Monday, June 1st, 2015 2:34pm PDT - promote requested by PlayhousePals.

Best thumbnail ever. Guy absolutely looks like a cynical world-weary font of knowledge, kinda like a disillusioned House without a house.

Very articulate, and a victim of a single wrong-place-wrong-time mistake. I wonder what he would have been like now without that one world-changing drug charge.

And I wonder how many others in 'murica are like him.

*quality

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by radx.

I would give this guy a job in a heartbeat. If he could pass a drug test.....................

Plenty of us out there. Some of us more successful than others.

You would be about the only American ever to give this guy a decent paying job with his history and only expect a clean drug test in return....oh, wait, you did mean a decent job that adds to one's self worth rather than a degenerating job that eats at one's soul and offers nothing but a way to almost get off the street...

sorry, but fuck that. i can say that mental health (in USA at least) sucks balls for a living. how many insurance policies (for the past 2+ decades) have seriously stepped up to cover ANYTHING for mental health coverage in the age of "paycheck-to-paycheck"? This poor bloke is a a victim of ...of...(still working that out for myself).

What I was trying to get to is this: without a mental safety-net (in an increasingly frantic society), self medication in inevitable to those whom want to persevere in some form in life. My hat goes off to this guy! "Never Give Up"

This kind of attitude is depressing. It's none of your business what someone does in their spare time when no one else is affected by it. There are functioning alcoholics turning up for work pissed, flying planes, driving buses, teaching children. But no, let's go after the guy who sits in his bedroom playing music with a joint. Let's prevent him from having a life, even if he is self medicating a mental illness. It serves him right - if he's got an illness, he shouldn't be using naturally occurring medicine like our ancestors have for thousands upon thousands of years, no! He should be paying hundreds of pounds to a big pharma company for a pill that they invented a few years ago.

The premise behind drugs testing people is based on many things i disagree with:
1) the spectacular failure of the war of drugs - not only has drug use increased in the timeframe, but it has ruined probably millions of lives, needlessly turning ordinary, hard working people into criminals for no good reason other than "we like this plant, but we don't like this plant, and now neither may you"
2) the origin of the war on drugs - which iirc from a well sourced and produced video on here recently was instigated by a vindictive racist who wanted to go criminalise things that were seen as "black people" pastimes
3) the bias of the war on drugs - where drugs associated with the poor and underprivileged are relentlessly pursued to the detriment of functioning happy families across the world, but drugs associated with rich white folk such as those boardroom jockeys who snort coke in the office bathroom, nah, give them an easy time
4) the american prison business - which demands a steady supply of low cost, low maintenance, low rights workers who have no choice in the matter
5) the spreading of disinformation through formal education/popular media, and lack of actual knowledge or experience of drugs - which has led to a generation of people who now firmly believe that the moment you inhale a particle of THC (or "inject 1 marijuana" to the uninitiated), your brain turns into a fried egg, and you immediately begin stealing, cheating, and peddling dangerous items to children

Some of the brightest and best humans were influenced and inspired by drugs. If i wrote a list of people that i had the greatest respect for and who i considered to have made a positive influence on the world, half of them would almost certainly be drugs users; and i mean scientists, writers and artists. Your philosophy is a detriment to society, but thankfully as the decades pass, there are less and less with that philosophy. I loathe being blunt, but there is nothing worse than someone who feels the need to dictate to others what they should and shouldn't do on the basis of what they personally do or don't approve of.

We might get about 90 years on this planet with a bit of luck - why the hell do the minority spend so much time trying to dictate to the majority what they do with that time? And why do the majority let them? What sort of control fetish is it that inclines people to want to do that?

This guy's life has been fucking ruined by your adopted philosophy towards drugs, and you offer to help him as long as he bends to your will? How magnanimous of you to stoop to gutter level to help a mere drug-addled cretin... I think he'd tell you to stick your job, he's overqualified to work under you.

http://www.gofundme.com/spittingtruth

Sent him some money, maybe he can use it to get his contracting going again. Maybe if I am lucky I will see him around town.

Dude, you need to chill. Have some weed or a glass of wine or something. The pot legalisation will work itself out over time. Once enough rich people realise how much cash is in it, it'll become an industry with lobbyists. Maybe Snoop should start a super PAC.

I agree with everything else you said, but "self-medicating" is bullshit. In the specific case of marijuana, there's plenty of evidence that we should legalise it and use it for treatment, but as a general point, there's no such thing as "naturally occurring medicine".

Medicine is only medicine after it has been tested and found to work. Otherwise, it has either not been proven to work or been proven not to work.

Big pharma might be dicks, but at least they're using science.

The gofundme reached its goal