Its not an arguement or anything. As a deputy I know that the people hooked on drugs will committ violent crimes to feed the habit. If you make drugs legal and available at Walmart they will still have to pay for them. Still gonna do the crime. I had a good friend who was in a wheelchair beat to death with a claw hammer because 2 idiots wanted his money to buy weed. So much for weed does not cause violence. Legal or not the crime will continue.
But other than that I agree with most of the LP platform. I can even accecpt the drug part to get back my freedom. I just know the crime will continue.
Bigduane
I don't know of many alcoholics or nicotine addicts who commit violent crimes to buy drugs. Most of them work for the money to fuel their habit because the prices of legal drugs make that economically viable. I think that blaming that murder on weed is pretty shortsighted. If their objective was drug money they wouldn't have beat the guy to death. There are people who steal and kill simply because they like money and power but I don't think it makes sense to pin the blame on whatever they blow the loot on. I'm sure thieves buy butts and beer with their stolen loot too, but that doesn't mean those products caused them to commit the crime. They were probably perfectly capable of supporting themselves and their habits through honest work, but just proffered to be leaches.
Most pot smoker that I know who commit crimes are simply selling drugs to supplement their own habit. I'm not saying that all methheads and heroin addicts would necessarily stop stealing if these drugs were legal, but you'd see a reduction in the amount of theft IMO and if you can respect peoples liberties and crime rates staid flat, that would be an improvement. To be honest I think you'd see less demand for the hard drugs, just like you see less demand for hard liquor now than during prohibition. People tend to prefer drugs that are not super concentrated.
I'm putting up some polls at jeffersonforum.net and that may be a good place to share info with folks who are thinking about moving to one of these states. As far as drug prohibition goes, Spain, Italy, and Luxembourg have decriminalized most drugs, and their crime rates went down. Portugal and Holland effectively decriminalized all drugs, and their crime rates declined. It's the illegal trafficking--the supply, rather than the use--that causes most of the crime.
Criminals are scumbags who have no respect for the rights of innocent people. They're really not much different from statists, and authoritarian regimes have often used criminals as their secret police forces. The damage done by the drug war--money wasted, lives ruined, higher crime rates, thousands of innocent people killed, spread of AIDS, and other diseases, breakdown in respect for the rule of law, high school kids put into prisons--is far worse than any benefit that anyone could point to. As far as I can see, it's done nothing but damage. Check out www.leap.cc
