Quote:
Originally Posted by Janszoon
On the bolded part we agree. And I feel that having prisons filled to the rafters with people convicted of victimless drug offenses has a negative impact on society not a positive one.
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I agree with that. I just think it's (for me) so hard to grasp the full scope of consequences legalization would have in the US. Is it a given that it would reduce crime? If nothing changes except it's turned legal, then crime should go down. If private companies are going to grow it and the government is going to tax it in an effort to control it, then the crime today could simply turn into black market crime instead. Under such a system, if the amount of cannabis consumers increases, then so could black market crime. That's not a prediction, just one of many possibilities for the future.
The reason I'm currently on the fence is that I don't really know what legalization would entail. The effect it will have on crime is one of the things I don't know, but there are plenty of others. F.ex is it going to be grown in the US or are companies gonna get their product from other countries? In my opinion, it's details like that which could turn a good idea into a bad one and vice versa. There could be a way to do it which I could support and another I'd be against, but I'm not sure what the general agenda of the pro-legalization people is.