My gosh, I’m beginning to write a
blog post concerning legalizing marijuana to free law enforcement to pursue
actual criminal activity and a perfect real time example turns up:
Posted: 04/ 3/2012 5:46 pm
Neill Franklin
Executive Director, Law Enforcement
Against Prohibition (LEAP)
Here in Coatesville we may be
laying off police from a police force that now has inadequate staffing. We
could draw from other nearby departments as we did consistently during
2006/2010. The problem is that nearby departments and even the Pennsylvania
State Police are also reducing their numbers. So if two serious incidents occur
in separate areas of Coatesville one will go without police for a time.
Federal grants and other support
for local and state police have been dried up by the Republican Party’s
instance on cutting back police funding. And even if Democrats win by
landslides all across the nation it will take several years to return local
police back to an adequate level.
In other words we are stuck with
inadequate policing for at least several years if the economy keeps on the
recovery side and Democrats win. And that’s the best prognosis.
Once layoffs occur in Coatesville
things like community policing, and detective work are gone. We will have a
reactive force.
“The group of twenty advanced
democracies—the major countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation
and Development (OECD), including the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan,
the Nordic countries, Canada, and others—can be thought of as our peer nations.
Here’s what we see when we look at these countries. To our great shame, America
now has:
• the highest poverty rate,
both generally and for children;
• the greatest inequality of
incomes;
• the lowest social mobility;
• the lowest score on the
UN’s index of “material well-being of children”;
• the worst score on the UN’s
Gender Inequality Index;
• the highest expenditure on
health care as a percentage of GDP, yet all this money accompanied by the
highest infant mortality rate, the highest prevalence of mental health
problems, the highest obesity rate, the highest percentage of people going
without health care due to cost, the highest consumption of antidepressants per
capita, and the shortest life expectancy at birth;
• the next-to-lowest score
for student performance in math and middling performance in science and
reading;
• the highest homicide rate;
• the largest prison
population in absolute terms and per capita;
• the highest carbon dioxide
emissions and the highest water consumption per capita;
• the lowest score on Yale’s
Environmental Performance Index (except for Belgium) and the largest ecological
footprint per capita (except for Denmark);
• the lowest spending on
international development and humanitarian assistance as a percentage of
national income (except for Japan and Italy);
• the highest military
spending both in total and as a percentage of GDP; and
• the largest international
arms sales.”
FROM:
From decline to rebirth
BY JAMES GUSTAVE SPETH
Published in the March/April 2012
issue of Orion magazine
If we legalized drugs beginning
with marijuana we would cut back these three items of "national shame" that I believe also greatly imperil public safety:
• the highest homicide rate;
• the largest prison population in
absolute terms and per capita;
• the largest international arms
sales.
Prohibition of drugs does not serve
public safety it reduces public safety.
Prohibition of drugs serves organized
crime and the public officials on the take from organized crime. Prohibition
overloads our prisons, our court systems and attorneys. Prohibition drives
international arms sales and violence around the world.
The economy is not going to improve
anytime soon and more police around the country will most likely be laid off. The primary duty of police is to maintain public safety. Prohibition of drugs pulls them away from maintaining public safety.
In order to maintain and improve public safety we must end Prohibition of drugs
in the USA.
