Won't somebody please think of the gangsters! How are they supposed to earn a living now? Imagine poor old Al Capone without a market for expensive booze, how would he have gotten by?
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> Won't somebody please think of the gangsters! How are they supposed to earn a living now?
It may sound funny, but to me it's one of the few reasonable arguments against legalization (or at least something to think about). I don't know in the US, but where I live (in France), there are a lot of people that live from selling cannabis. They're not Al Capone or dangerous criminals, just poor people that don't have better opportunities.
From our leaders perspective, this may be one reason not to address the problem of legalization (that, plus the fact that it's still largely unpopular).
Well, here in Brazil they are dangerous criminals and very, very violent, and no, they won't turn into upstanding citizens if the money from drugs dries up. They'll turn into other forms of cime, probably just as violent. However, in the long term they won't be making as much money as now, so they won't have the crazy arsenal they have today (military grade stuff, like rocket launchers, grenades, etc). I find it ridiculous that we keep it illegal, which drives the price way up, which fuels the gangs pockets, so they become heavily armed, and in turn so does the police, and the result is that not a week goes by in some cities where an innocent isn't hit by a stray bullet.
In the end, I'd rather have someone die of an overdose because they chose to and ended up (unfortunately) in that situation than to have the whole city hostage to this unwinnable war, and to have people die just because they happen to live in a bad neighborhood.
I haven't seen any data to backup the assertion that legalizing and regulating does hurt gangs and reduce the number of environmentally damaging illegal grows. But that is the general mindset of pro-legalization individuals here due to the media reports like the above.
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... with apologies to Charles Stross :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Stross#Merchant_Princes...