Legalize drugs to protect citizens and improve public safety

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:

While Obama's Thugs Raid Marijuana School, People Die

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: 

America the Possible: A Manifesto, Part I

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.