SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The Center for American Progress reports
On [February 27], days after White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters to expect stricter enforcement of federal pot law, Attorney General Jeff Sessions recycled discredited drug war talking points in remarks of his own.
"I believe it's an unhealthy practice, and current levels of THC in marijuana are very high compared to what they were a few years ago, and we're seeing real violence around that", Sessions said. "Experts are telling me there's more violence around marijuana than one would think and there's big money involved."
In reality, violent crime rates tend to decrease where marijuana is legalized.
Denver saw a 2.2 percent drop in violent crime rates in the year after the first legal recreational cannabis sales in Colorado. Overall property crime dropped by 8.9 percent [PDF] in the same period there, according to figures from the Drug Policy Alliance. In Washington, violent crime rates dropped by 10 percent [PDF] from 2011 to 2014. Voters legalized recreational marijuana there in 2012.
Medical marijuana laws, which have a longer track record for academics than recreational pot legalization, are also associated with stable or falling violent crime rates. In one 2014 study of the 11 states that legalized medical pot from 1990 to 2006, there was no increase in the seven major categories of violent crime and "some evidence of decreasing rates of some types of violent crime, namely homicide and assault."
[...] Elsewhere in his remarks, Sessions unwittingly made the case against treating pot activity like serious crime. "You can't sue somebody for drug debt". he said. "The only way to get your money is through strong-arm tactics, and violence tends to follow that."
Legalizing, regulating, and taxing the sale of marijuana is the surest way to remedying that exact tendency for pot commerce to trigger violent score-settling. Legalization invites pot business into the light, granting cannabusinesses at least partial access to official modes of recourse when they are defrauded.
8 states and the District of Columbia have legalised marijuana for recreational use.
Ever see anyone use cannabis and become more aggressive rather than more mellow?
Note: ThinkProgress redirects all accesses of their pages and will attach tracking numbers. I have made sure that those are not in the URLs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 02 2017, @08:42PM (1 child)
This is a way oversimplification and also just wrong. I'm sure racism played part of it (although in fairness, racism also goes the other way with black and minority voters voting for Democrats because "that's our team").
Among other things, there was the "firewall" of Pennsylvania, Michigan, etc of staunch Democrat states that voted for Trump. Was it that in 2016 they woke up to their inner racism, or was it that Clinton never visited any of them throughout the campaign? You can blame the former, but I'll bet the latter contributed as well.
Racism played a part... but there were numerous others (TPP, the death of coal, immigration policy, H1B abuses, timely exposure of Democratic and Clinton scandals, Democratic reaction to scandals, media coverage during the primaries, etc).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 02 2017, @09:16PM
> Was it that in 2016 they woke up to their inner racism
Yep.
Racism isn't a binary state.
Trump's entire schtick was about activating latent racism by making people feel threatened.
> (although in fairness, racism also goes the other way with black and minority voters voting for Democrats because "that's our team").
It is not the "other way" its the same way. Republicans keep telling minorities they aren't welcome. It isn't that minorities want to vote democrat, its that the republicans don't give them any other choice.