The problem with your thinking is that, like it or not, these killings are not simply acts of violence without motivation. The ability to kill is genetically coded in all human beings, given the proper motivation and the means. The drug war provides a black market that provides both of those things. Without it, many people would not find the benefit of killing someone to be higher than the cost.

Murder/rape/terrible things will still exist, simply not at the scale today.

Yeah, lets ignore the last 20-something years.

Your graph proves nothing. There is 0, zero, zip, zilch, nada that can show a correlation between prohibition of mind altering substances and violent crime.

Like 95% of this forum, I'm on your side when it comes to legalizing drugs. But the violent crime rhetoric is a non-starter. The data isn't there.

er.

Yeah. Ever see The Wire? :-\

I feel like OP is talking about people selling brick weed from Mexico in the hood, and most of the posters itt are talking about high end bud.

They are basically completely different industries and comparing them as one in the same is incorrect.

How so? I think they are fairly similar.

Holds all the similarities of a $1500/hr Vegas escort with a crackhead giving $10 BJ's IMO.

That pretty much sums it up.

One is legal and one is not?

Both are illegal AFAIK but I think one would have to be pretty intellectually dishonest to argue in good faith the latter isn't a much more serious public health concern than the former.

When you are buying high end bud you are typically working with different types of people than when you are buying brick weed.

Does a $1500/hr escort worry about being robbed, raped, arrested, etc. sure she does, but not anywhere near as much as the $10 bj crackhead.

I thought prostitution was legal in vegas and heavily regulated. I am not saying they are not on different levels. One can be much more dangerous but they can still operated in mostly the same way. I get the analogy though, so i'll stop obsfucating.

Well, they both have pimps. I would imagine the structure of the organization is much the same, but one group drives nicer cars.

I'm no expert on Nevada law, but IIRC prostitution is legal but regulated under Nevada state law but against a city of Las Vegas ordinance.

Actually it's legal in nevada but only in counties with less than a certain population level. Las Vegas and Reno both exceed that level

Yea, I knew there was some reason why all the (legal) whorehouses in Nevada were in the middle of the desert, I just couldn't recall how the whole thing worked exactly.

http://articles.boston.com/2012-03-0...l-gang-members

"Sicilia went on to found a nationwide movement advocating an end to Mexico’s drug violence, which saw at least 47,515 people killed between December 2006, when President Felipe Calderon launched an offensive against drug cartels, through September 2011, the latest figures made available by the government. Thousands more are thought to have disappeared."

That right there is 47,515 people who would be alive without the War on (some) Drugs.

Psychological reactance is the term you're looking for.

Satisfied? No. Because it's anything but definitiveas far as a person's actions. A person may feel psychological reactance, but that does not mean that they will act on it.


The topic is alluded to in the study you mentioned, but they leave out that it's not definitive. From their study:

Probably is ambiguously used in this context. It's easy just to make a blanket statement saying, in a vacuum not accounting for consequence, that they'd partake in the action. Many people would like to do stuff they aren't allowed to, and even though they really want to, they still don't.

I think an infinitely bigger motivating factor is peer pressure.



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