A few of points:
(1) I have not argued here on this thread either for or against drug legalization.
(2) The issue is not "drug related violence" it is violence.
(3) My point was quite simple; people seek money. Not just for illegal drugs, but for everything. Those with intelligence, education, skills, impulse control, etc. have a certain menu of options by which they may obtain money. Others have a more attenuated menu.
(4) Of those people who desire more money than their skill-set will afford them legally to obtain, some subset resort to crime. These people are scum.
(5) You said that the government created these people.
(6) You are wrong. They created themselves.
(7) While it is possible that changing the drug laws would result in fewer people in total choosing crime, that does not mean that these particular scumbags (the ones arrested in the story atop this thread) would be among those who chose the straight life.
(8) Therefore there is no rational reason to make excuses for these, or any other, gun-toting criminal scumbags. To excuse their criminality is an injustice to their victims, and to their peers who stayed straight.
Good post.
If politicians and bureaucrats didn't create so many gun control laws that violate the 2nd amendment the criminals would be dissuaded from robbery since they wouldn't know who was carrying a gun. Plus, more people would conceal carry if not for government violations of the 2nd amendment.
If drug prohibition were ended users wouldn't be robbing people to get their fix. Don't see alcoholics robbing people to get their next drink.
Each person is accountable for their actions. When alcohol prohibition ended violent crime plummeted. The same would likely occur with the end of drug prohibition.
All in all. politicians, namely members of congress, have disarmed people via gun control laws and created the conditions for violent drug-turf wars by prohibiting certain drugs. Pure propaganda demonizing marijuana was foisted on the public.
The constitution doesn't grant the government the power to prohibit any substance. Politicians of the day in 1917 knew that in order to prohibit alcohol that they had to amend the constitution with the 18th amendment.
Politicians creating drug prohibition laws have done so via the notion that the constitution is a living document. That what was illegal for politicians to do without amending the constitution in 1917 was legal in 1937.
How many thousands of drug dealers has there been over the last sixty-nine years? How much illicit-drug-related violence has occurred? How many innocent citizens have had their rights violated in the name of fighting drug-prohibition? What's the monetary cost to those victims? Drug prohibition laws and enforcement has cost tax payers over a trillion dollars.
The root of those problems is members of congress violating their oaths to honor and uphold the United States Constitution. Their lies the cancer. The above problems are the symptoms.
Additional note:
Legislating from the bench is a misnomer, at best. Congress is responsible for ensuring that the laws they pass do not violate the constitution. The courts and jurors merely rule on a case by case basis how the laws should apply -- not whether the law violates the constitution. Just as a juror should judge the facts and the law as it pertains to a specific case and nullify for that specific case, so should supreme court judges/jurors. Up until 1894 judges routinely informed jurors that they were to judge the facts and the law. That was in accordance with the 6th amendment assurance that the defendant would have an impartial jury. Elected officials -- congress -- create the laws. Appointed bureaucrats -- judges -- judge how the laws apply on a case by case basis.
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Law Enforcement Against Prohibition -- LEAP. In the trenches judges, prosecutors, LEOs, DEA, etc. that have seen the WOD from the inside.
As far as I can see, the only violence cited in the article came from the "law".