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Comment by rendall | Hacker News Reader

I disagree that legalization would likely increase violent crime.

Consider the Mexican drug cartels, who maintain their grip on power and resources specifically because of the high profits caused by the high risk of trafficking illegal drugs. These are extremely violent criminals with lots of political and economic power, and they have murdered over 60000 people since 2006.

It's hard to imagine that even large numbers of simple abusers of even the hardest, most risky drugs would be able to pull off such a holocaust in even the worst case.

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I think the this actually the best argument for some form of legalization, but given the amount of crime committed by drug users/abusers (not including drug trade related crime) the number in the US is comparable.

If people who use/abuse drugs only say on their couch and ate Doritos fine. But they cause (fatal) car crashes, violently rob and assault people, abuse their spouses and children, and commit homicide.

If ~1/3rd of offenses are committed under the influence that implies ~5k murders a year or ~78k since 2006 (admittedly I have no idea how many of those murders would have happened if the person was sober, but it’s worth noting the magnitude)

https://bjs.ojp.gov/drugs-and-crime-facts/drug-use-and-crime

Not sure. I think sticking to the inalienable principle that people can do what they want with their own bodies would resolve a lot of this. It's hard to say what proportion of violence stems directly from the fact that drugs are illegal versus just being high. If resources now directed to prosecuting drug traffickers and users could instead be redirected from law enforcement to treatment, counseling, education I suspect this would resolve. As far as I know, every locality that decriminalized experienced a drop in drug-related violent crime.

Prison is a much larger epidemic and prison will always be worse than addiction. Most addictions heal on their own within a few years. We shouldn't be grinding people into the system just for getting sick.

I agree that prison truly is an epidemic, and think putting people in prison for the purchase or possession of personal quantities of drugs is unreasonably cruel

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