I agree with your analysis and the injustice of outcomes depending so strongly on the specific twelve jurors for cases involving a strongly held small-minority opinion.
On the other hand, I'm not really optimistic about the strategy of electing legislators to effect changes in these specific kinds of laws for all the usual reasons.
In the specific case of marijuana, the benefits of decriminalization are diffuse and primarily among socially marginalized groups whereas the countervailing forces are socially respected and also highly concentrated (politicians who want to "do something", and law enforcement agencies who get a ton of discretionary power and funding out of the "War on Drugs"). This is a recipe for coordination failures on the "repeal" side and for systematic political advantages on the "criminalize" side.
One particular beauty of the jury system is that it is a legitimate buck-stops-here kind of way for local populations to control their local law enforcement in the face of overreaching non-local laws; if a particular city becomes so full of people who just don't believe that marijuana should be criminalized they can make that happen locally. Electing legislators is slow, and in the case of federal laws like drug enforcement, must be made to work in the entire nation at once rather than one-community-at-a-time.
On the other hand, I'm not really optimistic about the strategy of electing legislators to effect changes in these specific kinds of laws for all the usual reasons.
In the specific case of marijuana, the benefits of decriminalization are diffuse and primarily among socially marginalized groups whereas the countervailing forces are socially respected and also highly concentrated (politicians who want to "do something", and law enforcement agencies who get a ton of discretionary power and funding out of the "War on Drugs"). This is a recipe for coordination failures on the "repeal" side and for systematic political advantages on the "criminalize" side.
One particular beauty of the jury system is that it is a legitimate buck-stops-here kind of way for local populations to control their local law enforcement in the face of overreaching non-local laws; if a particular city becomes so full of people who just don't believe that marijuana should be criminalized they can make that happen locally. Electing legislators is slow, and in the case of federal laws like drug enforcement, must be made to work in the entire nation at once rather than one-community-at-a-time.