I think you are drawing false conclusions from flawed assumptions. For some reason you seem to believe that crime is the result of drugs being illegal, and that if we legalized drugs, that would solve most of our crime problems,
You are not being clear here. I never said it would solve all crime problems. I said it would solve our prohibition related crime problems. Mayor Daley (Jr.) said that drug prohibition was responsible for 85% of Chicago's crime problems. A police chief in CT said the same thing.
Even if the actual number is 25% vs 85% the crime reduction would be significant.
And note. Opiates were over the counter legal for nearly 300 years in America and the Republic did well. Even heroin was an over the counter medicine from its invention until it was prohibited in 1914.
As for marijuana. It was legal for even longer. In fact its very close cousin hemp was at one time legal tender in the US.
What we have now is a drugs + crime problem. Legalization will not solve the drug problem. It will solve the crime associated with prohibition problem. Just as it did with alcohol.
In addition technology changes things. Out of wedlock sex is not the problem it once was if birth control is used. So accumulated wisdom is good. Until it no longer applies. We no longer execute people for crimes of consensual sex. Why? Because we have the wealth to support the disruptions it causes. Some guy figured that out about 2000 years ago. His followers have yet to follow the essence of his solution: When conditions change the rules should too. In other words they got the rules change. They did not get the meta rules change.
As to minarchist policies being unpopular. I seem to recall a guy who won the presidency within living memory on minarchist principles. You know. The guy who ran on the platform: "Government is not the solution, government is the problem."
BTW pot is safer than alcohol. Heck, it is safer than aspirin. If you consider that alcohol's LD50 dose vs intoxicating dose is about 4 to 1 and that for pot the ratio is estimated to be 40,000 to 1 then you have to wonder why one was made illegal in 1937 while alcohol had just been relegalized in 1933. Why estimated? Well there has never been a single case of overdose on pot. Ever. So why is alcohol legal and pot use a crime? It can't be on rational grounds. It is on racist grounds. Because the drug laws were INTENDED to oppress minorities. The same job they do today. Now a lot of this is forgotten history. You might want to get your memory refreshed by a guy who taught that history to the FBI.
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/History/whiteb1.htm
But tell you what. If you believe the effect of drug prohibition is positive then of course you must believe that gun prohibition will help with gun crimes. How stupid of me. We have two prohibitionist factions in America. One believes gun prohibition can work and that drug prohibition can't. The other faction believes the opposite. I take the rational approach. Both sides are right. Prohibition doesn't work.
Let me give it to you straight. Prohibition has done nothing to limit the access to illegal drugs (such drugs are easier for kids to get than beer). All prohibition has done is to determine who will distributes them. WalMart or criminal cartels. Of course such arguments do nothing to sway those whose policy prescriptions are based on faith vs. evidence. Just as similar arguments re: gun prohibitions have no effect on that faith.
BTW if intoxicating hemp is such a danger why did it take until 1937 for it to get outlawed? Why did it take so long to recognize the dangers? Because the real danger was Mexican labor not cannabis. And at the time Mexicans were hemp smokers and Americans (for the most part) were not.
What danger got cocaine illegalized? Sex crazed Negroes on cocaine. Opiates? Chinese labor. Read the history.
It is funny that you think that getting high on pot is a bigger danger to our society than broken families.
http://www.issues.org/13.2/courtw.htm
Ah. Well. Rationality has never been a big part of human nature. And so we will suffer the ill effects of this misbegotten policy for several generations to come. The Family Values crowd should be proud of their accomplishments. The destruction of three to five generations of America's racial minorities. Good job people. The worst part for me is gangsta rap music. Durn that is some ugly stuff.
It is changing though.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/0 ... 98196.html
A majority of Americans, in a poll released Wednesday, say it "makes sense to tax and regulate" marijuana. The Zogby poll, commissioned by the conservative-leaning O'Leary Report, surveyed 3,937 voters and found 52 percent in favor of legalization. Only 37 percent opposed.
A previous ABC News/Washington Post poll found 46 percent in support. In California, a Field Poll found 56 percent backing legalization.
Responding to the poll at a press conference Tuesday, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called for an open debate on legalization.
Voters were asked: "Scarce law enforcement and prison resources, a desire to neutralize drug cartels and the need for new sources of revenue have resurrected the topic of legalizing marijuana.
Thank
The Maker.
Actually the policy is not legalization. It is relegalization. We are going back to what used to work. Surprisingly the "traditionalists" do not favor traditional policy. The wisdom of the ages. Go figure.
Humans is such interesting creatures.