Do I really need to rehash (hehe) all the arguments from the great Green Shinobi meltdown of 2009?
Drug dealers are violent.
Let's not have things go off topic on an unrelated tangent.
Maybe you do, I am curious what kind of backwards logic can't see how regulation, decriminalization, or at least the end of no knock warrants for non-violent offenses would better for society as a whole.
The legitimacy of the overall prohibition regime was not my point, and goes beyond the scope of what I was saying. You can talk about legalization all you like, and there are certainly arguments to be made that legalization would reduce the overall harm to society of drug use.
But that is fantasy talk. I was talking about the world as it exists
now. And in a world where drug prohibition
is the norm, and law enforcement agencies
are mandated to investigate drug trafficking, drug dealers
are violent. And given the above, hard entries on drug warrants and arrests
are necessary and justified. Period.
And
of course me saying "drug dealers are violent" is a generalization. I could hardly believe that
everyone who has ever given someone drugs for some cash is violent. What I mean by that is that violence is inherent and endemic to the illicit drug trade. And that can hardly be debated. Indeed, it is implicitly acknowledged by pro-legalization arguments that say the best reason for legalization is that it would eliminate or greatly reduce the deaths and violence from the drug trade.
So, given the above, for officer safety reasons, "drug dealers are violent" isn't a "we have to have evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the guy we're arresting is violent" or "gee, we don't
know that this drug dealer owns a gun, so we should treat him like he doesn't unless he pulls one out and points it at us." It doesn't work that way. That attitude gets officers killed. No, when it comes to drug arrests, you assume and prepare for them to have the potential for violence, because that is the way police officers go home alive at the end of the day.
(all of the above is speaking generally, of course, not specifically in reference to the story linked by Triumph, in which there were obviously some major fuckups)
