Argument: Legalizing drugs would eliminate an industry that drives gangs and criminal activities

Support

• Michael C. Chettleburgh. “Put the Gangs out of Business: Legalize Drugs.” National Post. June 13, 2007 – “Absent a robust underground trade in drugs, just how are Canada’s estimated 14,000 street gangsters going to make sufficient money to offset the dangers inherent in the job of gangster? Sure, they may turn to other criminal enterprise, but there is not another in the world so alluring, so profitable, so vibrant, than the drug trade. Drug reform will not solve the drug problem entirely. But it will go a long way to solving what has been termed the ‘drug-problem problem,’ which is the pull of the gang and its associated crime and violence.”

• Norm Stamper. “Legalize drugs — all of them”. Los Angeles Times. December 4, 2005 – “It would extract from today’s drug dealing the obscene profits that attract the needy and the greedy and fuel armed violence. And it would put most of those certifiably frightening crystal meth labs out of business once and for all.”