How to go directly to jail

Just yesterday a friend of mine was arrested for possession of marijuana - one ounce. Fingers crossed she gets off lightly. In the meantime my head was filled with mad, windmill-tilting thoughts. Perhaps this is best viewed as comedy, or if you'd rather, as proof that smoking marijuana renders one imbecilic.


Your Worship,

May I have a few minutes of the court's time to express an acknowledgement of my crime? Yes? I thank the court. Because it is clear that I have failed. That the police have spent time and money bringing me here, and that the court has devoted its own very valuable time to my case, is proof of this.

My prime failure is my inability to reconcile two understandings. The first is an historical one, to wit, America's prohibition of alcohol in the thirties. This famously failed on account its criminalising of otherwise law-abiding citizens and its enrichment of true criminals, who in turn, unsurprisingly, used this wealth to corrupt those ordered with enforcing the law. Not forgetting the debasement of the law in the eyes of those citizens newly deemed criminal. And all of this to no useful effect.

And the second understanding is that the prohibition of marijuana seems barely to differ from this.

Any decent citizen would be able to hold both of these thoughts in their head simultaneously and think nothing of it. That I am unable to do so reflects poorly on me and renders me as (how shall I put it?) 'the wrong sort of fellow'.

I do not wish to lay blame on others for my failure. It is not the fault of my education, nor of my parents, nor of society. The fault lays entirely with me. Numerous people, including the police, have, in a spirit of helpfulness, attempted to correct me in this matter. But perversely I have refused to concede to the rightness of their thinking - the rightness of holding two contradictory thoughts at once.

Clearly this renders me at odds with decent society. I appreciate that were everyone in society as wilful as me, things would quickly degenerate. In this mad dystopia I would have us live in, the law under which I am charged would be done away with, and criminals like me would be able to openly walk the streets, wander into a liquor store and purchase two joints of a Friday evening. Dreadful - that I, a criminal, should be rendered law-abiding, that the criminals who profit from marijuana should lose their income (indeed that the government would derive tax from these sales), and that everything taking place here today should be made unnecessary, is a mad thought from which all here rightly recoil.

Except for me, Your Worship. In this I fail. Further, that I should choose not to be fearful of the repercussions of holding to such views is condemnable. May I say, that the police have done the right thing and attempted to impress upon me where such thinking leads to. As one constable said to me (if the court will forgive me for quoting directly) - 'You fucking smart-arse cunt, see how fucking clever you are when you're in Boggo Road copping it up the arse!' I thank the police for this lesson in fear and apologise for my obtuseness in learning it.

As I apologise to the court also. That the court should have it's time wasted by jumped-up nobodies like me who imagine that they should determine the rightness of a thing by means beyond those prescribed by statute, is criminal in and of itself. That I obey all other laws, and concede their rightness, and otherwise qualify as a law-abiding citizen (and have done so for my entire life), is no excuse. Indeed, I have no excuse, Your Worship. I have failed and I admit it. I ask nothing for myself and submit to the court's better judgement.

Your worship, I thank the court for its time.