hat the people committing violent crimes are career criminals who will not stop their illegal activities once drugs are legalized; they will instead seek new sources of illicit revenue. Criminal activity would not be reduced as a result of drug legalization any more than gangster activity disappeared after the repeal of Prohibition. The group discussed the fallacy that legalizing drugs would eliminate the black market environment which seems to fuel the drug trade and its attendant violence. The existence of a black market is heavily dependent on the parameters set by the legalizers: which drugs would be legal, the potency level of drugs and the age at which legal drugs could be purchased. If drugs were legal for persons over 18, for example, drug traffickers would still target those 17 and younger; if only marijuana were legalized, drug traffickers would continue to traffic in heroin and cocaine.Some facts which help to confirm the observations of the forum participants may be used in debates: A report in the Journal of the American Medical Association (7/6/94) reports that cocaine use is linked to high rates of homicide in New York City and that "homicide victims may have provoked violence through irritability, paranoid thinking or verbal and physical aggression which are known to be pharmacologic effects of cocaine."" This is just one of the factual quotes i found durring my reseach, Which proves that marijuana is not the "mainly resonsible drug in the drug related crimes." Even though there are also statistics wich show that it playes a great role.Data from the National Institute of Justice (U.S. Department of Justice) Drug Use Forecasting (DUF) program underscore the crime-drugs link. Of a sample of males arrested in 23 U.S. cities in 1993, the percent testing positive for at least one drug in the DUF survey ranged from 54% in Omaha to 81% in Chicago. Among female arrestees, the percent testing positive for any drug in 20 cities ra...
