For those of us who keep wondering when the American people will wake up to the GOP over-reaching, maybe this is it:

Republican Congressman James Sensenbrenner [who served as a “manager” during the Clinton Impeachment] has launched his next assault on freedom. The full House Judiciary Committee is set to vote as early as next week on H.R. 1528, which creates a new group of mandatory miniumum penalties for non-violent drug offenses, including a five year penalty for passing a joint to someone who’s been in drug treatment.

That’s right: Passing a joint to someone who used to be in drug treatment will land you in federal prison for a minimum of five years.

The “Defending America’s Most Vulnerable: Safe Access to Drug Treatment and Child Protection Act of 2005” (H.R. 1528) was introduced by House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) on April 6, and it has already passed out of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security.

The one thing we know for sure is that jailing pot heads would only serve to jam more nonviolent citizens into our over-crowded prisons. What is fuzzy about this is how a joint-passer would learn the rehab status of the recipient of said joint. Every pot smoker would have to learn to ask, “Dude, have you ever, like, been in rehab?”

Even if you don’t care about legalizing pot, the US leads the world now in the percentage of its citizens in prison. Please visit the Marijuana Policy Project site and send an email to your Congressional representative to tell them you are against sending more nonviolent offenders to jail over something as silly as passing a joint to rehab graduate: Go HERE to send an email to Congress.