<story><title>U.S. Legalization of Marijuana Has Hit Mexican Cartels’ Cross-Border Trade</title><url>http://time.com/3801889/us-legalization-marijuana-trade/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>baldfat</author><text>The only thing that makes me hesitate this popular view:&lt;p&gt;1) There was a mafia in Italy and US long before Prohibition and after Prohibition&lt;p&gt;2) The violence and deaths of police officers in the US started to rise in 1900 and peaked at 1921 and declined for another 30 years.&lt;p&gt;3) Doesn&amp;#x27;t explain the statistical violence peaks of the 1970s and 1980s in our society.&lt;p&gt;4) We are at one of the least violent and peaceful decades in US History&lt;p&gt;[1] Police deaths in London and NYC (I could use other markers just this was a lazy first choice &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&amp;#x2F;pmc&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;PMC2586786&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&amp;#x2F;pmc&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;PMC2586786&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;
[2] US Crime Rate (Which I would argue is flawed since the recording of crimes prior to 1960s was not tracked in the same way as records are now kept after JFK assassination &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.csmonitor.com&amp;#x2F;USA&amp;#x2F;Justice&amp;#x2F;2012&amp;#x2F;0109&amp;#x2F;US-crime-rate-at-lowest-point-in-decades.-Why-America-is-safer-now&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.csmonitor.com&amp;#x2F;USA&amp;#x2F;Justice&amp;#x2F;2012&amp;#x2F;0109&amp;#x2F;US-crime-rate...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>jussij</author><text>Who would have expected that outcome?&lt;p&gt;Lets look back in history to see how well prohibition has worked in the past.&lt;p&gt;The exact same result happened back in the 1920&amp;#x27;s with the prohibition of alcohol. The 1920&amp;#x27;s prohibition resulted in nothing more than the rise of the Mafia.&lt;p&gt;Back in the 1920&amp;#x27;s there was similar waste of government money fighting alcohol, only to see the rise in the power of the Mafia.&lt;p&gt;Move forward to today&amp;#x27;s &amp;#x27;war on drugs&amp;#x27; and once again government is wasting massive amounts of public money trying fighting a loosing war.&lt;p&gt;The harder the fight the richer the drug kings become.&lt;p&gt;But now the states decide to go softer on a &amp;#x27;war on what ever&amp;#x27; and guess what, the &amp;#x27;drug kings&amp;#x27; once again start to loose money.&lt;p&gt;Nothing more than history repeating :(</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>joshuapants</author><text>1) The mafia didn&amp;#x27;t only deal in alcohol. Prostitution and gambling, two other popular-but-illegal things were often controlled by organized crime. Prohibition did allow organized crime a boom where they could squirrel away money and use it for their enterprises later on, which explains their presence after the fact.&lt;p&gt;2) I&amp;#x27;m not sure that police deaths are the best metric, since most of the violence during prohibition was carried out by gangs against other gangs. Given enough police corruption, violence wasn&amp;#x27;t even necessary.&lt;p&gt;3) How about cocaine followed by crack cocaine?&lt;p&gt;4) That doesn&amp;#x27;t mean we couldn&amp;#x27;t be less violent and more peaceful, and it doesn&amp;#x27;t mean that our law enforcement resources are efficiently allocated.</text></comment>
<story><title>U.S. Legalization of Marijuana Has Hit Mexican Cartels’ Cross-Border Trade</title><url>http://time.com/3801889/us-legalization-marijuana-trade/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>baldfat</author><text>The only thing that makes me hesitate this popular view:&lt;p&gt;1) There was a mafia in Italy and US long before Prohibition and after Prohibition&lt;p&gt;2) The violence and deaths of police officers in the US started to rise in 1900 and peaked at 1921 and declined for another 30 years.&lt;p&gt;3) Doesn&amp;#x27;t explain the statistical violence peaks of the 1970s and 1980s in our society.&lt;p&gt;4) We are at one of the least violent and peaceful decades in US History&lt;p&gt;[1] Police deaths in London and NYC (I could use other markers just this was a lazy first choice &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&amp;#x2F;pmc&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;PMC2586786&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&amp;#x2F;pmc&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;PMC2586786&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;
[2] US Crime Rate (Which I would argue is flawed since the recording of crimes prior to 1960s was not tracked in the same way as records are now kept after JFK assassination &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.csmonitor.com&amp;#x2F;USA&amp;#x2F;Justice&amp;#x2F;2012&amp;#x2F;0109&amp;#x2F;US-crime-rate-at-lowest-point-in-decades.-Why-America-is-safer-now&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.csmonitor.com&amp;#x2F;USA&amp;#x2F;Justice&amp;#x2F;2012&amp;#x2F;0109&amp;#x2F;US-crime-rate...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>jussij</author><text>Who would have expected that outcome?&lt;p&gt;Lets look back in history to see how well prohibition has worked in the past.&lt;p&gt;The exact same result happened back in the 1920&amp;#x27;s with the prohibition of alcohol. The 1920&amp;#x27;s prohibition resulted in nothing more than the rise of the Mafia.&lt;p&gt;Back in the 1920&amp;#x27;s there was similar waste of government money fighting alcohol, only to see the rise in the power of the Mafia.&lt;p&gt;Move forward to today&amp;#x27;s &amp;#x27;war on drugs&amp;#x27; and once again government is wasting massive amounts of public money trying fighting a loosing war.&lt;p&gt;The harder the fight the richer the drug kings become.&lt;p&gt;But now the states decide to go softer on a &amp;#x27;war on what ever&amp;#x27; and guess what, the &amp;#x27;drug kings&amp;#x27; once again start to loose money.&lt;p&gt;Nothing more than history repeating :(</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>AndrewKemendo</author><text>3) Doesn&amp;#x27;t explain the statistical violence peaks of the 1970s and 1980s in our society.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think the OP was making any correlation with crime in the 70s and 80s. You could however link that rise in crime to the spread of crack cocaine through NYC and LA if you &lt;i&gt;really&lt;/i&gt; wanted to.&lt;p&gt;4) We are at one of the least violent and peaceful decades in US History&lt;p&gt;Interestingly enough, while that is true, our incarceration rate is the highest ever and it started just as the drug war started. See also The New Jim Crow [1]&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;newjimcrow.com&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;newjimcrow.com&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>