Benefit of the Doubt

Sometimes laws get overzealous.

Take for example laws against drug smuggling. We put penalties against people who smuggle or distribute drugs because we don't want our society to be drug addicts. The purpose of the law is as what I've said, because we don't want more people to get drugged by drugs.

But because it is hard to prove motives in courts, because it's difficult to see if the person possessing those drugs are doing it for the purpose of distribution, lawmakers and courts give leeway to the law, so much to the extent that possessing a certain quantity of drugs alone is penalized severely by law, sometimes even by death.

And that's what I feel is wrong. Some people may come into drug possession as an accident. With such severe punishments attached to drug possession, innocent people with no intention of utilizing the drugs in any way may have their lives ruined by exactly the laws that are supposed to protect them.

I still remember how witchcraft trials in the west came to an end. Persecution of witches stopped because the emerging wisdom was how it is better to put loose 10 witches than to burn an innocent man.

Benefit of the doubt must be given to those found possessing drugs. We don't need to take a life for this. We don't want to take innocent lives. We know accidents and bad luck do happen. We know people get in trouble simply because they are in the wrong place and at the wrong time, without any intention of wrong-doing.

It is only fair, that as much as we don't want to be put on death-row for accidentally possessing drugs, that we don't put another fellow person in that situation.

Surely, no innocent life deserves to be lost just to make a firm warning to many others?