Four dunderheaded robed idiots on the State's top Court have stepped toward this slippery slope.
Bong water containing controlled substance traces, "regardless of purity," is an illegal mixture and the gross weight of bong water would determine the level of felony crime. That's according to such learned jurists.
So, what's a mixture, and isn't your body one? It's not a single substance. That's for certain.
And, the statute these four dunderheads rely upon says [unambiguously to them]:
Sect. 152.01, Subd. 9a.Mixture. "Mixture" means a preparation, compound, mixture, or substance containing a controlled substance, regardless of purity.
You test positive, your being - it is a mixture containing a controlled substance, regardless of purity, and even if you are extreme anorexic-bulimic, you're over the top weight limit and hence in the super big time felony range, ya sure, ya betcha.
If your bong water can bust you, your blood can too. Or it arguably could, unless and until the four opining idiots are voted out of office, or your legislators rewrite the statute to cancel this judically fabricated absurdity.
For links, first, the online opinion where three Justices showed good sense, and four lacked it, this link.
Strib reports, this link.
And you need not say it's absurd because Crabgrass says that, look at pages D-1, and D-2, the beginning dissenting pages of the opinion [link given above] for a refreshing wind of sensibility contrary to the wooden-headed majority four:
I respectfully dissent from the majority's decision for two reasons. First, I conclude the law does not support the result reached by the majority. The majority's decision to permit bong water to be used to support a first-degree felony controlled-substance charge runs counter to the legislative structure of our drug laws, does not make common sense, and borders on the absurd. The majority reaches its conclusion because it misapplies the plain-meaning rule and fails to consider the statutory language in its application to the facts at hand and in the context of the statute as a whole. The result is a decision that has the potential to undermine public confidence in our criminal justice system.
Second, I dissent because the decision of Rice County to charge Sara Ruth Peck with a first-degree felony offense—an offense that has a presumptive sentence of 86 months in prison—for possession of two and one-half tablespoons of bong water is not only contrary to the law, it is counterproductive to the purposes of our criminal justice system. In a recent article addressing problems with our nation's criminal justice system, Senator Jim Webb (D. Va.) said:The United States has by far the world's highest incarceration rate. With 5% of the world's population, our country now houses nearly 25% of the world's reported prisoners. We currently incarcerate 756 inmates per 100,000 residents, a rate nearly five times the average worldwide of 158 for every 100,000. . . .
. . . .
With so many of our citizens in prison compared with the rest of the world, there are only two possibilities: Either we are home to the most evil people on earth or we are doing something different—and vastly counterproductive. Obviously, the answer is the latter.
Senator Jim Webb, Why We Must Fix Our Prisons, Parade, Mar. 29, 2009, at 4. I agree with Senator Webb—Americans are not the most evil people on earth. Rather, we must be doing something “vastly counterproductive.”
Well, there's one flaw, the dissenting term, "borders on the absurd," was far, far too deferential to the dissent author's judical brethren.
IN FACT - They have done something so pitifully and inartfully deranged and stupid that Michele Bachmann would be proud of it, had she done it, if it were hers having a place in her parade of public stupidities.
That bad. Really.
And then, more obscene, the incarceration rate - and hey, patriots, wave those tiny American flags (made in China) and shout praise - that is a rate far ahead of Russia, and its infamous gulags, greater than any dictator's banana republic, greater than any mid-east hotspot.
Yes, Michele, "We're Number One!" The tiny flag waving can be overwhelming.