[happyscrappy]

I detected a hint of "the cop is the perp and the perp is the victim" in your other post but wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt. This kind of attitude is quickly disabused of when living in a poor neighborhood. Why are gang members practically suicidal? Drugs play a part, but they are not protecting their neighborhood they are trying to get a larger territory to deal drugs. As for the US going into the Middle East, it was probably a bad idea but then people turn around and complain we are not doing anything in Syria.

[msandford]

No, I don't think that the cops are to blame. It's a far bigger problem than that. They don't make policy, they just enforce it. Why blame policy problems on the police?

By your reasoning, though, one might surmise that ending the drug prohibition would then also end gangs, wouldn't one? The gang exists to defend illegal drug territory. Illegal drug territory only exists because drugs are illegal. Ending prohibition would make drugs legal, not illegal, and thus the outsized profits would go away. This would then make operating the gang unprofitable and it would disband or "go out of business".

I'm sure you'll bring something else up like "but drugs are bad!" or some such. But that line of reasoning works, doesn't it? Changing the subject because you don't like the moral implications of legal drugs isn't an argument.

[happyscrappy]

Legalizing drugs would reduce gang violence to almost zero, but whether or not drugs are bad is orthogonal to the argument. I lost a good friend to alcohol and have relatives struggling with heroin. Just for the record I cannot believe the huge comeback heroin is making, I just don't understand. Some kind of affluenza and believing the stupid media telling them that the world is shit. I am in favor of virtually anything that reduces suffering in the aggregate.

[msandford]

I think the real question is "would there be a net drop in suffering as a result of legalization?" and I personally suspect that the answer is "yes".

Forgive me for accusing you pre-emptively of moving the goalposts. It happens a lot and I get tired of it. That's usually what happens once it becomes clear that legalization would end gang violence, another objection to stopping legalization for another, never before mentioned reason.