News (Media Awareness Project) - US CA: Column: Recent Violence Doesn't Help Pot Legalization Efforts |
| Title: | US CA: Column: Recent Violence Doesn't Help Pot Legalization Efforts |
| Published On: | 2010-06-16 |
| Source: | Oakland Tribune, The (CA) |
| Fetched On: | 2010-06-17 15:02:36 |
RECENT VIOLENCE DOESN'T HELP POT LEGALIZATION EFFORTS
The argument for legalizing marijuana for adult recreational use goes
something like this: Marijuana isn't bad for you.
In fact, it has proved medicinal benefits for those suffering from
cancer and other illnesses. Even if you are not sick, a good toke
never hurt anybody.
Licenses selling for "medicinal" purposes is practically pot
legalization anyway, since pretty much anyone with a pulse can get a
prescription.
The pro-legalization forces argue that marijuana prohibition, just
like alcohol prohibition, has been a huge failure. The threat of jail
and fines has not stamped out use of the drug. Instead, hundreds of
thousands are arrested every year on misdemeanor marijuana possession
charges -- which clogs jails and costs a fortune.
Major drug traffickers use the billions in proceeds from marijuana
sales to fund violent criminal enterprises.
If marijuana were made legal for recreational use -- as is proposed
under the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010, which will
go before voters in November -- California could reverse what has
become a losing equation.
Our cash-starved state could rake in money by taxing a most profitable
cash crop. With property tax revenues heading ever further south, the
millions generated by pot taxes would be like manna from heaven. No
more pink slips for teachers. Or threats of police firings. No more
layoffs, pay cuts and furloughs.
Police
would be free to spend their time protecting society from dangerous
felons and other serious lawbreakers.
Those in favor also contend that if you remove the black market by
making pot consumption legal -- much of the marijuana-related crime
would automatically go down.
That is where I have to respectfully disagree.
Money is legal, but criminals still rob banks to get
it.
The more marijuana there is out there being grown, the more of it
there will be to be stolen.
Criminals gravitate to wherever there is anything of value they can
steal.
Marijuana may be fairly benign when used in small doses by adults who
are just planning to chill and not get behind the wheel of a car.
The rash of violence associated with residential marijuana growing
operations, clinics and dispensaries is not.
It has not been occurring only in California.
Patients, growers and clinics in some of the other 14 states that
allow medical marijuana have been attacked by robbers.
Earlier this month, a 15-year-old by from Oakland was shot and killed
when he and two others attempted to rob an Antioch couple of the
marijuana they were cultivating in their home.
According to police, the teen and two others broke into the house
through a rear window about 4:30 a.m. They immediately were confronted
by the man and woman who lived there.
There was shooting.
When it was over, the 15-year-old was dead, and the man and woman were
wounded.
It's unclear whether the residents had the required license to grow
the marijuana legally.
Police in Antioch say that violence associated with marijuana grows
has been on the increase.
Elsewhere in the Bay Area, medicinal marijuana clubs have been robbed.
Pot growers have been assaulted.
In May, two men tied up, beat and shot a grower in Oakland. They had
first broken into his apartment and tried to get him to fork over the
key to a large cultivation operation in East Oakland.
In October, a 43-year-old man was shot four times as he guarded a
friend's medicinal marijuana crop in North Oakland.
Six people were arrested recently for breaking into a condo in Oakland
because they thought -- incorrectly, it turned out -- that pot was being
grown there.
El Cerrito police Chief Scott Kirkland has been a vocal critic of
legalization.
He says that whenever you have drugs or money, you have crime. He
argues that you are crazy if you think decriminalization is going to
make the Asian gangs and Mexican cartels walk away.
San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris, a Democrat, and her
Republican challenger, Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve
Cooley, both oppose legalization.
Oakland City Attorney John Russo, meanwhile, calls legalization a
"smart "... law-and-order initiative."
We will see what voters have to say in November.
The argument for legalizing marijuana for adult recreational use goes
something like this: Marijuana isn't bad for you.
In fact, it has proved medicinal benefits for those suffering from
cancer and other illnesses. Even if you are not sick, a good toke
never hurt anybody.
Licenses selling for "medicinal" purposes is practically pot
legalization anyway, since pretty much anyone with a pulse can get a
prescription.
The pro-legalization forces argue that marijuana prohibition, just
like alcohol prohibition, has been a huge failure. The threat of jail
and fines has not stamped out use of the drug. Instead, hundreds of
thousands are arrested every year on misdemeanor marijuana possession
charges -- which clogs jails and costs a fortune.
Major drug traffickers use the billions in proceeds from marijuana
sales to fund violent criminal enterprises.
If marijuana were made legal for recreational use -- as is proposed
under the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010, which will
go before voters in November -- California could reverse what has
become a losing equation.
Our cash-starved state could rake in money by taxing a most profitable
cash crop. With property tax revenues heading ever further south, the
millions generated by pot taxes would be like manna from heaven. No
more pink slips for teachers. Or threats of police firings. No more
layoffs, pay cuts and furloughs.
Police
would be free to spend their time protecting society from dangerous
felons and other serious lawbreakers.
Those in favor also contend that if you remove the black market by
making pot consumption legal -- much of the marijuana-related crime
would automatically go down.
That is where I have to respectfully disagree.
Money is legal, but criminals still rob banks to get
it.
The more marijuana there is out there being grown, the more of it
there will be to be stolen.
Criminals gravitate to wherever there is anything of value they can
steal.
Marijuana may be fairly benign when used in small doses by adults who
are just planning to chill and not get behind the wheel of a car.
The rash of violence associated with residential marijuana growing
operations, clinics and dispensaries is not.
It has not been occurring only in California.
Patients, growers and clinics in some of the other 14 states that
allow medical marijuana have been attacked by robbers.
Earlier this month, a 15-year-old by from Oakland was shot and killed
when he and two others attempted to rob an Antioch couple of the
marijuana they were cultivating in their home.
According to police, the teen and two others broke into the house
through a rear window about 4:30 a.m. They immediately were confronted
by the man and woman who lived there.
There was shooting.
When it was over, the 15-year-old was dead, and the man and woman were
wounded.
It's unclear whether the residents had the required license to grow
the marijuana legally.
Police in Antioch say that violence associated with marijuana grows
has been on the increase.
Elsewhere in the Bay Area, medicinal marijuana clubs have been robbed.
Pot growers have been assaulted.
In May, two men tied up, beat and shot a grower in Oakland. They had
first broken into his apartment and tried to get him to fork over the
key to a large cultivation operation in East Oakland.
In October, a 43-year-old man was shot four times as he guarded a
friend's medicinal marijuana crop in North Oakland.
Six people were arrested recently for breaking into a condo in Oakland
because they thought -- incorrectly, it turned out -- that pot was being
grown there.
El Cerrito police Chief Scott Kirkland has been a vocal critic of
legalization.
He says that whenever you have drugs or money, you have crime. He
argues that you are crazy if you think decriminalization is going to
make the Asian gangs and Mexican cartels walk away.
San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris, a Democrat, and her
Republican challenger, Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve
Cooley, both oppose legalization.
Oakland City Attorney John Russo, meanwhile, calls legalization a
"smart "... law-and-order initiative."
We will see what voters have to say in November.
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