And as a former Police Officer in the Air Force and Reserves nd with many State and Local Police department friends I can say they mostly agree- they have never had to break up a domestic with pot-heads...The mosney we waste with police fighting this...
Here is a mental exercise for you. If policing marijuana usage is so expensive, go the way of the city of Oakland declaring certain crimes and felonies to not be worthy of police investigation. That is, make as policy a virtual "sanctuary city" for pot-heads in the same way cities decline to enforce immigration laws by making "sanctuary cities" for illegal aliens.
If it is so damned expensive, then surely not enforcing marijuana laws by ignoring possession and flagrant use will be a boon to city coffers and increase the quality of life in that city in the same way ignoring the teeming hordes of illegal aliens have made our urban centers such utopian centers of social and fiscal bliss.
Somehow, even the most profligate wasters of public money and caterers to the lowest common denominator of mankind know that a sanctuary city for dope smokers is one of the fastest ways to guarantee instant sub-Detroit status.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.html
They went much farther than what is being proposed here, but take a look at their results and give a fair opinion on them.
I lived next to Oakland in the 80s. Legal pot will have no bearing or not on them being worse than Detroit, as they’ve shown they can attain that status well before pot was ever legal there.