More violence comes from enforcing prohibition then the drugs themselves.
Yep, the way I see it there are at least three ways that drugs can be associated with violence: (1) black market violence; (2) acquisitive crime violence to feed an addiction; and (3) under-the-influence violence (i.e., the psychoactive effects of a particular drug increase an individual’s propensity for violence). With respect to category 3 violence, alcohol is BY FAR* the worst offender. Drug prohibition CREATES category 1 violence and exacerbates category 2 and 3 violence by, respectively, making a person’s addiction more expensive and encouraging people who want to “get high” to use booze to get there. It is a moronic and disastrous policy.
*From Marijuana is Safer: “The U.S. government estimates that alcohol contributes to 25 to 30 percent of all violent crime in the America, including 30 percent of homicides and 22.5 percent of sexual assaults. However, the approach federal researchers used to calculate these figures attributes the use of alcohol as a primary cause of violent behavior in only 50 percent of the cases where the perpetrator had been drinking. Yes, you read that correctly. In order to be conservative with their estimates, researchers only consider booze to be a contributing factor in half of the cases in which alcohol was actually involved. This means that in reality alcohol was involved in some manner in 60 percent of homicides and almost half of all sexual assaults.”
