Reply to Who else voted against weed legalization for rec use in MD?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]almost no one goes to jail solely because of pot possession unless they have so much that they're a drug dealer. i dont know why this myth refuses to die.  [/quote]

"almost no one" isn't very comforting to the people who do go to jail. [/quote]

Don’t break the law and you won’t. Did you grow up in a world devoid of consequences? [/quote]

It's so cute* how you ignore racist policing patterns and how "just follow the law" is applied unevenly.  Like, every one of your January 6 buddies would have been shot.

*not cute[/quote]

Actually, I'm a crime analyst.    And very liberal.    I've posted here before.   Cops aren't going after marijuana because it's marijuana.  Cops go after the violence associated with marijuana.   Just like they went after the violence associated with crack rather than powder cocaine, which had nowhere near the amount of associated street violence.

Unfortunately, the nation does not experience safety equally.   The victims of community violence are overwhelmingly young Black men.   Different jurisdictions have had varying experience with the illicit cannabis trade after legalization.  California in particular has seen illicit sales and the associated violence grow.   Here in Montgomery County, historically, all drug-related homicides are related to marijuana.   That homicide rate has increased since we decriminalized marijuana.    When you reduce the transactional cost for law breakers and increase the transactional cost of law enforcement, you get more violent crime.    And that's what has happened here.

If the drug-related murder rate falls in Montgomery County, I will come back and eat my words.   (And gladly, honestly)    But I don't think it will.   I think shootings and homicides will only increase.   And while that likely won't impact UMC white cannabis fans, it absolutely will hurt young Black men.

[/quote]

Data analyst, great!  Please explain poverty level as a contributing factor and how you distinguish causation from correlation when analyzing crack vs powder cocaine.  Same question for "marijuana-related violence".

What if the problem isn't the marijuana, it's the poverty?  Criminalizing marijuana won't solve the problems, just push them around.[/quote]

Poverty itself?  No.   Concentrated poverty?  Yes.   And those areas are historically Black and brown.  And overwhelmingly, most lower income people are law-abiding residents.   It's a very few who cause the real harm, but that harm impacts the whole community.   So since it's a small area geographically, and involves a small number of offenders, the homicide rate is not significantly influenced by fluctuations in poverty rates.

The bottom line is there are really two different Americas.  People who live in concentrated poverty and everyone else.   Looking at a recent County crime report, with 16 homicides through September, 13 of which were committed in equity focus areas, and just doing a back of the envelope break-down, the homicide rate is almost zero (0.4 per 100,000) in most of the county.  But it's almost 5 per 100,000 people in the equity focus areas.  That means people in lower income communities of color are experiencing a homicide rate almost 13 times higher than the rest of the County.  That's just homicides.   There are non fatal shootings, again all concentrated in the equity focus areas of the County.

Now, how to eliminate, or at least reduce, areas of concentrated poverty?  [b]That is way above my pay grade.[/b]   But failure to fix systemic issues before adding more stress to challenged neighborhoods is exactly why I voted no.  [/quote]

On this we agree.  Data can be useful, but discussing the ethics of a decision like that means understanding the tradeoffs.  You're picking up on some of it, but missing big pieces that people here are trying to explain.  So put down your "but I'm an expert" card.[/quote]

So please explain what pieces I am missing?  There are two groups.  The most honest one is the one where people just want to smoke weed.   The least honest group is the one who thinks they are helping lower income people of color by making it legal.   And that's not true.  It's the exact opposite.  [/quote]

It's more complicated than good vs. bad and trying to reduce it to that is oversimplifying it.  There are people that I consider bad, who just don't care about or actively want to disadvantage lower income people of color.  But them aside, I think we can agree on goals but weigh the pros and cons differently.

Do you understand the cons of making it illegal?
I understand the cons of make it legal.[/quote]

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