Proposition 19 Makes Us All Safer

Opponents of Proposition 19 like to claim that it will cause crime to increase, put a heavier strain on law enforcement, and be a general public safety nightmare.  As I touched on in my comments on why Senator Feinstein is wrong for opposing Prop 19, the facts just don't support this.

First, there's the obvious advantage of freeing up our police and courts to pursue real crime.  Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), a group of cops, judges, and prosecutors dedicated to finding common sense solutions to drug issue, reports that, according to the FBI, over 61,000 Californians were arrested for misdemeanor cannabis possession in 2008, while 60,000 violent crimes went unsolved.  Many local jurisdictions receive federal money for focusing on enforcement of cannabis prohibition.  Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko admits that drunk driving and robbery are bigger problems for his community, but busting cannabis growers is "where the money is."  How many murders, rapes, robberies, and assaults were going on while police were traipsing through woods looking for outdoor grow operations, or harassing medical patients, providers, or growers who are legal under state law?

Second, black markets generate crime.  Alcohol prohibition (1920-1933) caused property theft to increase 13.2 percent, homicide 16.1 percent, and robbery a shocking 83.3 percent.  Violent crime continued to rise into the early thirties, only receding after prohibition was repealed.  Today, instead of bootlegging mobsters, we have Mexican drug cartels and local gangs working together. LEAP reports that "in 2008 alone, cartels murdered 6,290 civilians in Mexico -- more than all U.S. troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan combined."  The cartels only remain in business while cannabis is illegal.  Legitimate businesses resolve their differences in the marketplace or the courts; gangs and cartels just shoot at each other.  When was the last time you heard about a drive-by shooting caused by the bootleg whiskey trade?

Finally, there is the belief that drugs just inherently cause crime by their very nature.  This is an absurdly broad argument to make about all drugs in all circumstances.  Drug-related crime falls into three categories:

1. Systemic crimes, or crimes that are defined by the drug laws themselves, such as possession, sales, production.
2. Economic crimes, or crimes committed to support a drug habit, such as theft or prostitution, as well as the violence associated with the black market as discussed above.
3. Usage-related crimes, or crimes committed due to a "lifestyle" of use, crimes committed because of hallucinations or euphoric state.

The first are self-defining, and should not be part of the argument. If prohibition were ended, obviously, this category of crime would disappear entirely. Some claim that if cannabis is taxed, the black market will continue to get around it, but I don't see how that follows; we tax alcohol and cigarettes-- especially cigarettes-- and there are no violent booze or tobacco cartels. When we talk about "drugs causing crime," are we really talking about the sort of petty tax evasion in ordering a carton of smokes tax-free off the Internet?

The second category has a number of problems with it.  First, there is the assumption that just because a large number of crime perpetrators have drugs in their system, the drugs must have caused the crime. Correlation does not equal causation; a large number of those criminals, for instance, also probably drank milk, but no one is suggesting milk causes crime.  There is a large amount of evidence that the same social conditions that often lead to crime can also be a cause of drug abuse.  Second, there is an assumption that all users of drugs are abusers and/or addicts of drugs, and that addicts will do anything for their "fix."  Studies show this is simply not the case, and that for most drug users, criminal acts actually lead them into drug use, rather than the other way around.

So why are so police and district attorneys so dead-set against ending prohibition, if it would lower crime, make their jobs easier and safer, and free them up to pursue crimes that affect their communities more directly?  Obviously, there is the money.  Drug laws created in the 1980s allow law enforcement to seize assets immediately upon arrest in drug cases.  It becomes very tempting to not look at the facts just discussed above when you've just nabbed millions in cash and property.

In the case of district attorneys, they are elected officials.  Because we've now raised two generations on massive anti-drug campaigns aimed at kids and their parents, it has been political suicide to even hint that ending prohibition is a valid solution.  Such an individual would face an inevitable vicious attack from his political opponents, accusing him of being soft on crime and encouraging drug abuse.  Additionally, they are under massive pressure from the mayors, sheriffs, and police commissioners of their localities to keep their arrest rate up, and busting drug dealers and users are often easy wins.

More insidiously, I think many police have been drinking the "Just Say No" Kool-Aid too long, so to speak.  If you hear the same thing over and over all your life, and see the worst of society on the street every day in your job, you can start to draw skewed conclusions.  Police don't see the huge number of respectable, "normal" professionals who go home and smoke a joint at night to unwind, they see the gang members who smuggle it in from Mexico in plastic covered bricks.  They're too close to the situation to see that prohibition causes the things they hate most about the drug trade.

So, for the sake of our police, our justice system, and most of all ourselves, please, let's end this nightmare.  Vote yes on Proposition 19.