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Marijuana possession is equivalent to stealing a half billion dollars. There was much media chatter about yesterday's sentences of Tyco's CEO L. Dennis Kozlowski who, with his sidekick CFO Mark H. Swartz, managed to loot find nearly $600 million among the belongings of Tyco shareholders.

The Wall Street Journal's Question of the Day poll ("What do you think of the prison sentences given to former Tyco executives Kozlowski and Swartz?") was answered with Too Harsh 12%, Too Lenient 42%, and Just Right 45% as of this writing. The Journal's opinion page said, "...the outcome strikes us as just. Not because of their greed -- there's no law against lavish living yet -- but because of their crimes." The implied but unspoken fear is that such harsh treatment of American executives could eventually extend to other useless, parasitic devotees of lavish living: the ruling class of American media.

To any objective observer, it's obvious that the Tyco verdicts were not nearly harsh enough. Kozlowski was sentenced to a minimum of 8-1/3 years. The relative harshness or leniency can be determined by a simple comparison with other nonviolent crimes — take marijuana, for example. Though marijuana possession sentences vary widely by state, even today the average sentence for just having (not selling) marijuana in a state like Alabama is 8.4 years.

Let's review:

Victimless crime: 8.4 years
Stealing $575 million: 8.3 years

Using marijuana possession with its number of affected parties (one) as the basic unit of sentencing, shouldn't Kozlowski's crime with its number of affected parties (thousands, at least) mandate a sentence of at least 8,300 years?

{ 6:43 AM }

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