Talk:Drug-related crime

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[edit] drug-related crime assumptions

I respectfully but strongly disagree with the assumption that drugs cause crime. Clearly, illegal (as well as legal) drugs carry manifest dangers to the users. And all such drugs often appear at crime scenes. But there is little to suggest that the use of these drugs itself causes crime. Instead, it is the circumstances of sale and use, the prohibition, that causes crime.

Most “drug-related” crimes are in fact economic crimes, committed either by addicts supporting an unaffordable addiction or by drug dealers/cartels protecting market share without legal recourse, as was the case during the “Lawless Years” of alcohol prohibition.

The figures cited in this article bolster the position that desperate people resort to crime to pay for their addiction. It is not the drug or their behavior on the drug, but their inability to obtain it in an orderly, affordable manner that yields most of their criminality and danger to society.

Controlled, ongoing experiments in Switzerland with thousands of long-term heroin addicts demonstrated that even daily use of this powerful, addictive drug does not in and of itself lead to (and in fact, significantly decreased) violent and property crime. (see the Lancet, June, 2006). About a half dozen other European countries are now emulating this approach.

Thank you for your review, and I look forward to hearing from you. Bill Fried Billfried (talk) 22:02, 20 February 2008 (UTC)