[OldNewYork]

Oops.

[Dapper 26]

The Road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

[chris37]

Make marijuana related murder illegal then.

Problem solved.

[sargon]

Balderdash.

[fireman15]

I do not know if the “official” statistics support it, but my own observations both professionally and personally over the past few years are that the crime situation in Washington has gotten much worse since marijuana was legalized. Whether it is marijuana or the bad influence of Obama’s policies I do not know for certain.

[Jeff Chandler]

I have friends who have been smoking pot for decades. They recently got scripts for medical marijuana. The first time I met with them after their scripts I did not know they had them, but I did notice a radical change. They were flying so high they were in orbit. I had never seen them so stoned.

The pot they get from the pot store (skunk weed) is magnitudes stronger than what used to sell on the street.

[Jack Hammer]

Strange and somehow counter-intuitive.

Seems like it should be easier to get the stuff and at cheaper prices.

[digger48]

The timing also coincides with the migration of liberals to CA.

May be the pot, may just be the natural state of things when liberals take over.

[Cololeo]

Murder??? Someone must have stole ALL the munchies.

[NTHockey]

Naw! Now that’s a surprise./s

[TigersEye]

Brauchler believes the legalization of marijuana is partly to blame for the rise in crime.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

When we were looking for a house we found a property that was pretty much what we were looking for. But the place just did not set right.

When I checked I found it was in a medical marijuana grow zone.

I took the place off my list.

Might as well hang out a "please rob us" sign.

[nathanbedford]

All this time all we had to do was make marijuana illegal and the problem would be solved. Who knew?

With this great insight we can aim the law at gambling, drinking and prostitution.

[fr_freak]

you will always require money to purchase pot, whether it is legal or not, and it is that need to acquire currency to procure the addictive drug that is a primary driver of marijuana-related crime.

Here is the money quote, people. Just another hysteric who doesn't what the f*** she is talking about.

Now, there may actually be a correlation between legalized pot and crime rates in Colorado, which was one of the first states to legalize it. But the correlation may simply be explained by the type of people who were drawn to Colorado when the law passed - basically all of the lowlifes from the surrounding states who were chronic potheads. It's the same when San Francisco decided to give free money to the homeless. Guess what? They got more homeless! Surprise surprise!

However, this authoress claims to have science! on her side and then says that pot is addictive, demonstrating that she knows exactly jack and is still holding on to the same dumb arguments in favor of the unholy Drug War that were being used before legalization. She fails to consider any other possibility because she is emotionally invested in the illegality of pot. Why? Who knows. Brainwashing? Affiliation with the law enforcement community who have lost money and power due to legalization? The hot hunk in high school wouldn't give her the time of day and he got high once?

[CurlyDave]

The problem is not the marijuana.

Living in pot-legal Oregon I have seen this in my little town.

The real problem is the rules about selling marijuana. Because it is illegal at the federal level, banks will not give accounts to mj stores, and all transactions must be in cash. The money quote from the article is "crime follows cash", which is absolutely true.

Think about this. If the stores could take checks and Visa cards, there would be a lot less cash to attract criminals. They could pay the rent with a check instead of a stack of Benjamins, and would not have to worry about being held up on the way.

If we took some other item, auto parts, for example, and made it illegal to sell auto parts for anything other than cash, there would be lots of stories about how auto parts stores lead to increased crime and how we have to eradicate this scourge from our society.

The problem is not what is being sold, but that it is only sold for cash money.

I look at the legal pot industry and have to laugh.

Right now it looks like there is lots of money to be made, but in a few years prices will come down to a little bit over the cost of production, and there will be a huge shakeout.

[Ken H]

"If cash is the only way to acquire marijuana, crime follows cash," Brauchler said

So a business with cash is a target for robbers. Who would have guessed?

"It is easier for there to be black market in a legalized system than there was before.

So it must be easier to have a black market in alcohol since it's been relegalized.

_____________________________________________________________

This idiot is a 'respected prosecutor'?

[newnhdad]

but, once you legalize dope, there will be no crime and life will be perfect...

[Right-wing Librarian]

More propaganda and brainwashing from Big Pharma and their bought tool, Brauchler. No sale.

[Redmen4ever]

Colorado and Washington are performing an experiment with legalization. This is one of the beautiful things about states and nations that can set their own policies.

When we had marijuana decriminalization, the main effect was that some people shifted from alcohol to marijuana. Marijuana use and marijuana-related misbehavior went up, but alcohol use and alcohol-related misbehavior went down. We did not have much of the drug gateway effect (people progressing from marijuana to hard drugs).

Legalization is another level. With legalization, you can use licensing and taxation to control supply, as with alcohol, tobacco and gambling. So, legalization isn’t not the same thing as candy bars. But you have to be on the lookout for the drug gateway effect, the possibility of crime, and also the possibility that a lifestyle of drug use and welfare will replace a lifestyle of sobriety and work.

As life becomes tough for more and more people, with stagnant wages, higher taxes, Obamacare, and so forth, there is the possibility that more people will say to hell with it. Why form a family or get a job, when I can live off food stamps, play video games, watch cyber porn and smoke dope?

[WMarshal]

The true source of the crime is that the marijuana business in CO has been locked out of the banking system so they have to use cash and that means that there is a lot of cash.

Saturday Evening Post in January 1951: “Someone once asked Slick Willie Sutton, the bank robber, why he robbed banks. The question might have uncovered a tale of injustice and lifelong revenge. Maybe a banker foreclosed on the old homestead, maybe a banker’s daughter spurned Sutton for another.

Sutton looked a little surprised, as if he had been asked “Why does a smoker light a cigarette?”

“I rob banks because that’s where the money is,” he said, obviously meaning “in the most compact form.” That eye for the simple essential may be the secret of a singular success.”

All of the “war on drugs” warriors are no better than the Prohibitionist on the 1920s and 30s. They have some valid points but they are not above lies, propaganda, and violence. For instance there is credible evidence that the FBI deliberately poisoned alcohol during Prohibition: https://sites.psu.edu/shivensblog/2014/02/20/fbi-poisoning-alcohol-during-prohibition/