But when vices are treated as such, not as crimes, the crimes that are left are those very few people are sympathetic to or apathetic about.
I have a lot more antipathy for a burglar than I do a kid selling weed in the park.
As a minimum, I want every burglar caught before police time and effort is wasted on vices. We're pissing away gazillions in the WOsD. We're criminalizing hundreds of thousands of citizens who have violated no one's rights. Corruption is rife in our police forces because of the cash. Individual rights are being swept out with the trash as SWAT teams conduct no-knock raids that kill and injure innocent citizens.
As another poster said, the War On Drugs is the worst set of policies ever enacted in America.
I don't much care about pot one way or the other but the pro-drug side wants to treat someone possessing drugs like the date rape drugs or selling PCP which will make people insane the same as that little kid selling weed in the park.
Also a park is a public place ---- I can't just go set up a hot-dog stand in the park, why should drug dealers be allowed to turn parks into drug stores?