Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Perry said he has already begun the process to move toward softer punishments for marijuana offenders in Texas.
“As governor, I have begun to implement policies that start us toward a decriminalization,” Perry said as quoted by the Chronicle, including with “drug courts,” an alternative to the traditional court system that sentence some drug users to rehabilitation and supervision instead of jail time.
Perry’s spokeswoman told the paper that the Republican governor still opposes fully legalizing marijuana, but he is looking for ways to reduce jail time for some nonviolent pot users.
“Legalization is no penalty at all, whereas decriminalization doesn’t necessarily mean jail time (for minor possession offenses). It means more of a fine or counseling or some sort of program where you don’t end up in jail but in a rehabilitative program,” Lucy Nashed said. “The goal is to keep people out of jails and reduce recidivism, that kind of thing.”
The comments were Perry’s first on decriminalization, although he has been supportive of the drug courts, which were created by a 2001 Texas law.
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The goal of our national and state legislatures police and other investigatory and regulating bodies such as the Federal Motor Carriers Safety Administration and indeed the most important goal of personal injury lawyers such as myself is to compel trucking companies to make safety a priority. This is accomplished in a variety of ways. For instance the legislature compels safety policies by way of enacting laws for which there are administrative or criminal penalties if the laws are broken. Alternatively my firm does its part by holding trucking companies financially accountable when they break the law and cause someone to suffer an injury or die. Or another way to look at it some trucking companies take shortcuts on safety because its cheaper in the short run; I sue them on behalf of my clients thereby making them realize that in fact being safe is actually a prudent business decision in the long run.
But averaging out the number of problems by the total number of trucks inspected is actually downplaying the problem. In fact 2516 of the trucks were found to be fully compliant. As such their drivers were awarded with a decal which exempted them from further inspections for 90 days; sort of a gold star if you will. However 3490 (approximately 64%) of the vehicles that were inspected failed to pass in some capacity. That means that literally 