Daryl Gates’ Comments on Drug Users
Studies have repeatedly shown that the consumption and production of marijuana in the United States is on the decrease, and that criminalization costs society more in terms of increased law-enforcement-related costs and deprived revenues from taxes on pot than legalization would.
The dangers of marijuana are fewer than such legal substances as tobacco and alcohol, and any crime and violence connected to it is a direct result of its criminalization. If it were not for demagogic political grandstanding of the “war on drugs” ilk, it would have been legal long ago.
Meanwhile, our country’s real drug problems grow unabated. Our current problems of drug-related crime, violence, deaths, disease and birth defects are primarily fueled by cocaine and crack, and to a lesser extent (as the number of addicts to those substances are lower than cocaine and crack) heroin and methamphetamine.
MICHAEL SNIDER
Los Angeles
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