I was surfing WRAL’s webpage the other day and, like many of their web visitors, got stuck in their gallery of arrest photos. Like the “rate me” sites like Am I Hot Or Not?, the parade of suspect photos pulls you in, making you want to click just one more time to see what’s next.
Anyway, I was clicking away one afternoon when I noticed a pattern. Of the suspects arrested for drug violations, the overwhelming majority of them were arrested for the possession or sale of marijuana. While there were some arrests for other drugs, marijuana was far and away the drug most often cited.
Then today’s paper brought the shocking statistic that nearly 50,000 people have been murdered during the last five years of Mexico’s narco wars. Ruthless, violent, and emboldened drug lords are laying waste to cities right up to our very border and yet few Americans seem to be concerned. It’s only a matter of time before that bloodletting spills over the border and those drug cartels take over.
Yet, we could so easily remove the money and the guns from our streets and Mexico’s by legalizing this harmless drug. Says a former federal agent writing in Alternet:
Let’s forget the speculation and get to certainties: what is plain as day is the fact that the demand for cannabis sativa is responsible for more deaths in Mexico than anything else—and after half a decade of unrelenting bloodshed—the body count just recently surpassed the 50,000 mark. Personally, that’s a bitter pill to swallow considering 50 percent of Americans now believe marijuana should be outright legalized, according to Gallup’s most recent poll from October 2011.
Pot doesn’t fuel violence, the pot prohibition does. Legalizing marijuana for personal use would put a huge dent in the drug trade and make our streets safer.