One of the least impressive arguments youâll ever here from drug war supporters is that we have to keep drugs illegal otherwise all the drug offenders will move on to other more horrible types of crime. Check out how LEAPâs Howard Wooldridge rips it apart in a Wall Street Journal LTE:
Itâs really just that simple. People like to sell drugs because itâs ridiculously easy and profitable, not because theyâre all born criminals. I canât say for sure what all of them will do if we regulate them out of business, but I can tell you what they wonât do: sell drugs on the street to anyone with a $5 bill. And thatâs the point.
Weâre the only people entering this discussion with a plan to actually stop people from selling drugs on the sidewalk in our communities. Our plan may not be perfect, but the alternative is a proven disaster.
I learned something about how drug prohibition generates crime during my 18 years of police service. Eighty percent of my property-crime case load was caused by addicts needing money to pay sky-high prices for crack, etc. Legal crack would cost an addict about a dollar per day, as would heroin and amphetamines.
Ronald Shafer (Letters, Dec. 30) worries about what drug dealers would do without their prohibition-generated jobs. The one million teens who sell drugs would begin flipping burgers and mowing yards. Serious thugs will rob banks where we will capture or kill them. Or was Mr. Shafer suggesting to continue prohibition as a jobs program for bad guys?
Itâs really just that simple. People like to sell drugs because itâs ridiculously easy and profitable, not because theyâre all born criminals. I canât say for sure what all of them will do if we regulate them out of business, but I can tell you what they wonât do: sell drugs on the street to anyone with a $5 bill. And thatâs the point.
Weâre the only people entering this discussion with a plan to actually stop people from selling drugs on the sidewalk in our communities. Our plan may not be perfect, but the alternative is a proven disaster.
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