You want to curb gun violence? End the War on Drugs. [View all]

[MadHound]

One of the top causes of gun violence in this country is the War on Drugs. By making drugs a highly valued, yet black market commodity, the drug war is promoting gun violence. Dealers, growers, and users resort to gun violence in order to settle disputes, stake out turf, and eliminate their competition.

This all very reminiscent of Prohibition, when gangs rose to prominence, using gun violence to enforce their will Today's gangs do the very same thing, and to a much greater degree. Desperate addicts use guns to get the cash they need to feed their artificially pricey habit. With profits in the thousands and millions, dealers use guns to protect their territory, do away with competition, and deal with those who go against their will.

By legalizing drugs, all drugs, we would take the profit motive out of drugs. Legal drugs are much cheaper than the black market ones. Drugs that are regulated, inspected, offered at a lower price and a higher quality would immediately undercut the black market. By undercutting the black market dealers, gun violence would decline. After all, how many times have you heard about rival bar owners dueling it out on the streets? The same principal would apply with drugs.

The fact of the matter is that by keeping drugs illegal, we are simply not preventing the use of drugs. You, I and our neighbor down the street can probably figure out how to get an ounce of weed within a couple of hours, and probably more than that. Drugs are widely available in the unregulated, violent world of the black market. Thus, if we cannot curb the availability of drugs, we might as well do something to end the gun violence that surrounds drugs. That means legalization.

A further benefit of legalizing drugs would be the fact that we could start openly treating drug addiction as the health problem it is, instead of treating it as a legal/criminal problem. The secondary wave of violence and crime that surrounds the current drug market would disappear, and gun violence would go down. People could get the help they need without fear of prosecution, and without that fear of going to prison, the need for gun violence would also disappear.

Or we could continue this War on Drugs, and end up like Mexico, fighting an undeclared, but still deadly war that is costing the lives of thousands of citizens. The choice is ours, I hope we choose wisely.