TexasSeaRay said:
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Tell us about all your felony arrests and how many of them had NOTHING whatsoever to do with drugs at any given point in the life cyle of the crime they were being arrested for?
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Jeff, I've made a few felony arrests in my time. You're right-- at least half of them were drug related. Oh. Wait: That's because about half of
those were for mere possession, which the state decided to make a felony.
Felonies should only be for robbery, murder, aggravated assault, arson, major thefts... stuff like that. Making my family subsidize (through tax dollars) the ~$38,000 a year (old figure-- I'm sure it's higher, now) to house a state prison inmate for the mere possession of less than a gram of some illicit substance is just stupid.
But, yes, I know where you're going with it-- whenever I run a guy's criminal history and find out that he's got burglary in his past, it's an amazingly high likelihood that this guy also will have an addiction to some drug or another.
BTW, the most prolific burglar that I ever caught was burglarizing to feed his addiction to hydrocodone-- a LEGAL pharmaceutical.
Like guns, we can't put the genie back in the bottle. All we're doing is trampling human and constitutional (despite the SCOTUS ruling in
Raitch) rights, with little demonstrable impact, other than that we're raising the prices of the illicit substance (which seems to create a profit motive for the dealers). Let's manage 'em more effectively, by managing them.
This from a cop who makes drug arrests, likes his beer on occasion, and never even once took a puff of pot.