re: Would drug legalization increase the frequency of overdoses?

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To do as much as possible to abate drug abuse

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It's about jobs. Government jobs. Correctional jobs. Increasing and keeping departments funded.

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It has decreased since 1991

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Was crack made legal since 1991?

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What caused the end of the crack epidemic?

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Alfred Blumstein, a criminologist at Carnegie Mellon University, agrees with Fox. “There are four major factors in the drop in crime,” he says. “No. 1 has been getting guns out of the hands of kids, No. 2 has been the shrinking of the crack markets and their institutionalization. Third is the robustness of the economy. There are jobs for kids now who might otherwise be attracted to dealing.” In last place, Blumstein says, is the criminal justice response, or as he puts it, “incapacitation related to the growth of incarceration.”

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Blumstein believes the connection between crack markets and the popularity of guns among youth drove the crime epidemic of the late ’80s and early ’90s. “All of the growth in homicide between 1985 and ’91 was among young men with handguns,” says Blumstein. “The homicide rate in that group doubled — while it fell 20 percent among people over 30 … Regular kids started getting guns and using them, partially for protection, partially because it was trendy. It diffused out from the nuclei of dealers and worked its way into the broader community.” Just as beepers started out as icons of drug-dealing cool and spread to other teens, so did guns, with far worse results.

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It appears our population changed. Milder drugs such as weed became cool, and crack lost popularity.

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It appears our population changed.

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So.... RoevWade??

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You got addicted to drugs...its not your fault its a disease...lets use tax money to pay for rehab centers, welfare, medicaid, and free housing for you just because you screwed up your life.

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You're doing that right now.

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You're doing that right now.

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True, that's why the war on drugs isn't working.

Legalizing it but refusing to make people accountable for their mistakes is not going to improve the situation.

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Probably support every addict with the money saved from the C/J system.

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That's a pipe dream.

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So you're not gonna refute it?

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Is that any different than not proving it?

There is a bit of an ego issue if you think it's the others guys responsibility to refute something that you refuse to prove.

Sometimes it would be nice to have these types of conversations withe a certain amount of knowledge that is already on the table and accepted. This is something that should already be on the table. Legalization has not shown to raise the percentage of addicts. A meh example of this is the fact the Netherlands has much better numbers than the US in nearly every category on this matter, even far lower homicide rates.

Since I'm a fair person, not just a stat sharer, I have to consider things like the social climate in the US vs the Netherlands. I can say that homicide rates are much lower in a place with lax drug laws, but the conditions for crime are different in the US.

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Probably support every addict with the money saved from the C/J system.

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No you won't.

Again, most inmates serving time have lengthy criminal histories. Most would still be in jail for just a different crime.

Its not a drug problem its a propensity to break the law problem. Its a want everything for nothing problem. Its a not willing to work hard to be successful problem.

Legalizing drugs will not correct that