Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2019 May 15

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May 15

Narcotic Laws

In various places around the world, but especially in the UK, the US and South Africa... There are people in prison for Narcotic related crimes such as possession of Cannabis. If Cannabis and the possession thereof and personal use is legalised, what happens to these people in prison? Are they A. released because the law has changed to acknowledge that the "crime" they committed is now deemed to not be an offence or B. forgotten about, or C. At the time of their indiscretion their crime was illegal and therefore because they have broken the law they need to be punished in accordance with the law. I believe that it is rare for someone to be imprisoned for Cannabis, it is more the principle of the matter which I am interested in, yet the legalisation of narcotic mushrooms in some or other US state recently may be more relevant. As an aside, I have used many drugs in my youth and am deeply against any form of legalisation. Thanks.

When a previous law is repealed or otherwise nullified, it is no longer applicable to situations to which it had been, even if such situations arose before the law was voided; this principle is known as nullum crimen, nulla poena sine praevia lege poenali Latin for "no penalty without a law". See Retrospective#Law and Canabis_(drug)#Legal_status. DroneB (talk) 09:47, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

true that, but this applies before conviction. A law dispose for the future, not about the past; and is almost never "voided" so that all effects are nullified; people who were convicted when it was in force remain lawfully so, whether jail time is over or still ongoing (and cannot, say, sue for having been imprisoned or fined for no crime). See below answers of Loraof (talk) Wnt (talk) and 47.146.63.87 (talk) for example of how provision about convicts have to be including in the repealing act. Gem fr (talk) 09:55, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

Thank you. So as a follow up, have people been released from prison following the changing of the laws in the three aforementioned jurisdictions? -- 81.131.40.58

The federal law in the US has not changed, and only a minority of states have decriminalized marijuana. Stronger stuff is still illegal or tightly controlled everywhere. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:05, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

There is some stuff about the situation in Canada here. We were always somewhat less draconian when it came to imprisoning people for smoking the devil's cabbage than our friends to the south, so the discussions were more about expunging criminal records than emptying prisons. Matt Deres (talk) 13:25, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

• I googled "Governor pardons past marijuana offenders" and got various hits, mostly about Washington state and Michigan in the aftermath of recent legalization. These imply that the legalization has no effect on past offenders (otherwise a pardon would be superfluous). Loraof (talk) 17:44, 15 May 2019 (UTC)
• Logic doesn't work on laws, especially not drug laws. For example, in the U.S. a 20-year-old kid could buy a keg of beer from a friend, get busted for underage drinking, get tried as an adult for it, and be sitting in jail on his birthday, and even if they did repeal the law, without specific provision to the contrary, nobody is coming into the cell to let him out let alone bring a bottle of whiskey to celebrate. Wnt (talk) 19:13, 15 May 2019 (UTC)
  • Not "in the U.S." as such, but in any particular state where the guy has violated that state's minimum-drinking-age law. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:30, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

    Legal drinking age colors the U.S. as one country, because though states technically could have a different age, they would have to pay billions in taxes toward highway funds that they would have no access to. Your conception of the old "states rights" system is as obsolete as trial by jury. Wnt (talk) 16:30, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

    News flash: We still have trial by jury in America. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:26, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

    If you want to probably spend the rest of your life in jail ... rather than signing a deal to be released on 'time served' provided only that you give up your constitutional right to appeal. Very few people make the wrong choice on that one. Wnt (talk) 22:48, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

    Depends on whether they did the crime or whether they were framed. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:12, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

California legalized recreational use and sale of cannabis in 2016 with the Adult Use of Marijuana Act; the Act provided for reduction or dismissal of certain cannabis-related crimes. See the sources provided in the article for more details. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 03:06, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

What piece of military equipment costs the most per kg? (excluding classified objects or stats obviously)

Is it some small radiation-hardened electronic object like a chip? What's the most expensive known military vehicle per pound? A supersonic stealth aircraft maybe? What about a weapon? (cost per pound) Is it a railgun or laser or what? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 19:44, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

This is always going to depend on what you define as "military equipment". There's a good chance it's supergrade plutonium or the nuclear weapons it's used in. I suspect it will be hard to get a really definitive answer, because different amounts given as the "cost" of something may vary in methodology. This could be only marginal cost, it could include full costs of research, development, etc. amortized over the number of units, it could include the costs of actively deploying a system versus simply the cost needed to get it rolled off the assembly line, and so on. --47.146.63.87 (talk) 02:53, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

To illustrate, a military satellite is obviously useless until launched (is it even a "piece of military equipment" before that?), so, do you count the launch cost, or not? Gem fr (talk) 09:02, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

Money is a piece of military equipment, the mother of them all, isn't ? So the 500 euro note is a decent contender. Not sure of it's weight, could be 2g, making it ~0.25 M€/kg or ~0.13 M$/pound or 290 M$/metric ton (about 10x more the notorious Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit said to cost ~2.1 $Billion apiece, that is, ~30 M$/metric ton ; pretty sure it qualify as the most expensive vehicle, btw)

Also, it doesn't answer the question but let me remark that being as light as possible, everything else equal, is a quality, not a flaw; and especially so for military equipment. So military (and pretty much everyone else as well) actually aim to make things as light, ie, as high "per pound" as possible. Meaning, excuse me, but the "per pound" is one of the dumbest metric you can imagine to assess a cost for such an object (I wouldn't say that if it were about value, with the objective to be able to move the highest possible value in the most convenient way, but that's not the point of military equipment, is it?).

Of course, it can be smart to use a dumb metric, for someone in the business of fooling people, like a clickbaiting internet site or a politician, but I guess you are not.

Gem fr (talk) 09:02, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

In the US even a little piece of plastic who's only use is to function as tape instead of taping two part X's together has a designation (Holder, Magazine T3-A1), I doubt paper money is given designations like that in any country. I would count anything with an official designation like that as military equipment. Of course all other things being equal lighter is better, I was just wondering. If you just count the satellite then you only have to divide by the satellite's mass, if you count the entire delivery system plus its payload you'd have to divide by a mass at least about an order of magnitude higher than that satellite which may or may not make it more expensive in some or all metrics (I don't know). Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 13:40, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

Each banknote has its own serial number, and I would be very surprised if those were not recorded when given for a mission tool (to bribe some powerful , to pay some informant, to buy a downed pilot's way back home, etc.)

but fair enough, you may exclude the sinews of war if you so choose.

In which case the most expensive piece of equipement ever could be little boy, considering the developpement costs

Gem fr (talk) 12:32, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

Probably hydrogen. Good for rocket fuel, has negative weight on a balance. Of course, it may score otherwise as packaged for shipping... Wnt (talk) 16:33, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

Hydrogen in uncompressed gaseous form is bulky and extremely flammable (explosively reactive with atmospheric oxygen) -- we have an article hydrogen safety. I would strongly doubt whether any significant quantity of it is shipped in that form... AnonMoos (talk) 07:51, 17 May 2019 (UTC)