{"id":7078,"date":"2018-02-12T13:06:59","date_gmt":"2018-02-12T18:06:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/?p=7078"},"modified":"2018-02-12T13:06:59","modified_gmt":"2018-02-12T18:06:59","slug":"washpo-licenses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/2018\/02\/12\/washpo-licenses\/","title":{"rendered":"Suspending common sense in Virginia (and 11 other states)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\nIn <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/suspending-common-sense-in-virginia\/2018\/02\/09\/23b69968-fbc6-11e7-a46b-a3614530bd87_story.html\">The Washington Post<\/a> this weekend, I explained how states continue to use the war on drugs to meddle with driver&#8217;s licenses: <\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\nYou\u2019d expect to lose your driver\u2019s license if you drove dangerously, but what if you ran afoul of the tax code, mail regulations or controlled-substance statutes? Sadly, in Virginia, that\u2019s not a hypothetical question.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nVirginia currently suspends nearly 39,000 driver\u2019s licenses annually for drug offenses unrelated to driving. This is a relic of the war on drugs, and, while most states have opted out of the federal law that created these automatic suspensions, Virginia motors on.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\nAs do <a href=\"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/driving\/\">11 other states<\/a>: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Utah.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s time for these states to leave this practice in the dust. Or take the next legislative exit ramp. Or change lanes on reform. Or put the pedal to the metal&#8230; ok, you get the idea. More info available on our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/driving\/\">driver&#8217;s license campaign page<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My Washington Post Op-ed explains how states continue to use the war on drugs to meddle with drivers&#8217; licenses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[12],"class_list":["post-7078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-shorts","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7078"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7083,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7078\/revisions\/7083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7078"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=7078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}