So ridiculous I must reply to this. Deep Breath

Police departments are just that. Departments. There are sections and divisions, organized crime, alcohol, tobacco, and firearms, gang-related issues.

Do you believe that cops are spending more money and time on sting operations than stopping domestic violence, gang wars, serial killers, and rapists?

Ok, so the libertarian party, (whom I don't wish to diss), wants us to believe that too much time is being spent on suppressing the drug trade. That may or may not be the case, but cutting back on that corner won't give you lower violent crime rates. That's where the study in the preceding writeup is misleading. I can give you a list of many studies that show the increase of drugs will lead to an increase in crime.

Didn't we just go through the whole 1990's talking about this? In theory, once your addiction takes away all your money, possessions and job, you are turned to any way possible to find money. Therefore crime goes up. I don't see drugs on the top list of convictions. Sure, it's disproportionately high, but I don't see legalized drugs as the solution. What about DUI? People driving with marijuana in their system are insanely reckless people. I just can't trust that.

Perhaps I'm missing a point, and in some cases an understaffed police force may be spending too much time on drug crime. Legalizing drugs probably won't do much good in that respect, it will just worsen violent crime, which goes hand-in-hand with drugs. The preceding study just sounds like an excuse to hide behind a reason for legalizing pot, and throwing in an excuse that is too inflammatory.

And in other news, police arrest more people for public nuisance infractions than for marijuana crimes. More people are arrested for driving under the influence of intoxicants than for driving on a suspended license.

Oh, and did the statistics include any information about the unsolved cases? Cops only arrest the marijuana cases because they are easy to execute: pothead and pot are in the same car or boat. Cops have a harder time finding the perpetrators of the more violent stuff.

One could say, the "milder" the infraction, the more people will deviate from the law. Thus, it would be a big non-surprise if marijuana arrests outnumbered violent arrests.

In theory, once your addiction takes away all your money, possessions and job, you are turned to any way possible to find money.

This is true, however marijuana is not physically addictive, so the point is irrelevant.

I can give you a list of many studies that show the increase of drugs will lead to an increase in crime.

The only reason this is true is because drugs are illegal. Can you show me a study that shows the legalization of marijuana will lead to an increase in crime? Or even, one which proves that the legalization of cocaine, heroin, and crack (physically addictive drugs) would lead to an increase in crime (not that I'm necessarily encouraging that)? In fact, it would probably lead to a decrease in drug-related crimes if drugs were commercially available at reasonable, competitive prices.

The legalization of drugs in certain European countries has shown that the use of drugs will skyrocket at first when they are legalized, and then soon after drop well below levels before they were legalized. I've not read anything about crime levels, but one could only assume that once drugs are affordable, people won't need to commit crimes to get them.

The only reason marijuana is still illegal is because the US government doesn't want to lose the billions of dollars it gets in taxes to "fight the war on drugs", not to mention all the jobs that exist solely for that task.

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