Exactly. Although I don't think they should be released outright because when they did it, it was illegal, but maybe lower the sentences.
I heard a story a long time ago about a guy selling a LOT of marijuana who got something like 40 years to life (or some such nonsense), yet convicted child molesters are free after a few years to molest again.
Our priorities are a bit warped.
Look at the origins of drug criminalization. It wasn't just a bunch of do-gooders looking to control everyone else (as with Prohibition) but southern Democrats looking for another reason to jail black men (just like gun control was used to disarm blacks), many of whom used inexpensive cocaine instead of alcohol.
And just like gun control, they eventually got around to oppressing EVERYONE. The government spends BILLIONS of dollars evey year in a war on the people. Thousands of people are murdered every year by drug dealers over turf. When was the last time two liquor dealers battled it out? (I'll give you a hint: it was before Prohibition ended) Every year thousands of people have their private property stolen by the government on the SUSPICION that it MIGHT have come from the sale if illegal drugs, and the government doesn't even have to do so much as make an arrest.
We spend billions more incarcerating men who at one time would have just been ordinary merchants looking to make a few extra bucks. Take a fraction of that money and treat the people who become addicted and help THEM rather than the government.
Legalize drugs and practically overnight the murders over drugs will cease. The government will immediately have hundreds of thousands of jail cells empty so that child molesters can spend their full sentence.
The trouble with this is that many are only there for "non-violent simple possession" because they plea bargained to a lesser charge. If you were to get rid of the easy plea bargain system we use, and charged, for example, weapons charges whenever they applied, I might agree. But only if we also banned recreational drug users from any public medical assistance. And, yes, I include tobacco and alcohol in this.
I happen to be in the decriminalizing.. Jails need the rooms for Child Molestors and viloent criminals..
I've considered this issue myself, and originally took the same position. It took me quite awhile to probe this deeper. When I did, my opinion shifted for one reason. The people sitting in jail for non-violent simple possession had a common bond with the violent offender. They had a disregard for the law. Like it or not, it is law that binds a society. If a person or group disagrees with the law, don't break it, change it. Breaking the law, whatever it may be, shows a contempt for law and society itself.
Breaking the law can only be justified when it serves the society as a whole, and not the individual. It was that service to society, not individual, that drew the forefathers of our nation together.
I'm not belittling the opinion you and others hold. A great many people share the opinion. I agree these non-violent offenders shouldn't receive a life sentence, but I believe the non-violent offenders must be dealt justice for breaking the law. That may be a year for first time non-violent offenders, but it could become a life sentence for habitual non-violent offenders. The premise of law in our society must be uncompromising. It is our very foundation.
It may surprise you to know I see the failed War on Drugs as justification for change and governing illicit drugs in the same manner alcohol has been governed with the end of Prohibition. Even if that day came about, I would be inclined to keep the non-violent drug possessor in prison that broke the laws of possession prior to the change. Law must be upheld. It's not a question of violent versus non-violent crime. It's a question of law being respected.