>>I am interested in how you think that violent crime would be reduced by the legalization of drugs. Can you expand on this please?<<
As I said, 80% of all violent crime is from the drug trade. It doesn’t take a huge leap of faith to project that with no more illegal drug trade, the associated crimes would go down as well. No more drug deals, no more drug deals gone bad. No more cartels, no more cartels (and street gangs) killing each other off for turf.
I am not saying crime would go away — it would just be a big dent in it.
Not sure why this calculus is hard for some folks to understand.
>As I said, 80% of all violent crime is from the drug trade. It doesn’t take a huge leap of faith to project that with no more illegal drug trade, the associated crimes would go down as well. No more drug deals, no more drug deals gone bad. No more cartels, no more cartels (and street gangs) killing each other off for turf.<
80% seems VERY high to me, more like the users are the ones who are doing it.
You may have a different view than me of the gang to gang violence. But in many areas of the country, they have their turf, they don’t have many turf wars, they are looking to do business for the most part.
In my experience I have seen a lot of drug related violence. Robbery, burglary and even murder to get money to buy the drugs. Certainly i have also seen new factions moving into established selling territories and homicide over that. But the vast majority of the crime, either property or violent has been against people who were no more than a cash cow for the users.