Wednesday, September 15, 2010

EX-COPS FOR LEGAL POT: DEMENTIA MUST BE SETTING IN

Dementia must be setting in for some former law enforcement officials. They claim that legalizing pot ‘would unclog court dockets and allow police to focus on more serious crime.’ Don’t they realize that with pot legalized, there would be a tremendous increase in the number of people driving under the influence of marijuana with an attendant rise in the motor vehicle death toll.
 
And then there would be a surge in juvenile delinquency cases because juveniles will gain access to pot just like they do with alcohol. So the courts will remain just as clogged and the cops just as busy dealing with the problems of legalized marijuana as with illegal pot.
 
Legalizing pot will not curtail the drug cartels either. The cartels will just put more emphasis on cocaine, heroin and other illegal drugs, thus making problems with those drugs even worse than they already are.
 
I can understand why the former district attorney of San Fransicko is in favor of legalizing pot, but I am really disappointed to see Joseph McNamara among that group. I knew McNamara personally and held him in high regard, that is up until now. Does McNamara support the legalization of marijuana because, as a resident of the San Fransicko Bay area, he was exposed to some serious mental health hazards or is he doing it because he's fallen in with his far-left colleagues in academia?
 
EX-COPS SAY ‘YES’ TO LEGAL POT IN CALIF.
A group of former California law enforcement officials have endorsed a ballot measure that would legalize marijuana in the state
 
By Greg Risling

Associated Press
September 14, 2010
 
WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — A group of former law enforcement officials on Monday endorsed a November ballot measure that would legalize marijuana in California, saying it would unclog court dockets and allow police to focus on more serious crime.
 
The group supporting Proposition 19 is largely comprised of former or retired police officers, judges and prosecutors. Among them are former San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan and ex-San Jose police Chief Joseph McNamara.
 
Supporters said keeping pot illegal props up drug cartels and overburdens the state's court system. Stephen Downing, former deputy chief for the Los Angeles Police Department, said the nation's drug policy has failed, likening it to cutting off the leg of a spider to cripple it.
 
"The drug organizations are more like starfish," Downing said during a press conference at a West Hollywood park where children were playing with their parents behind him. "You cut a leg off, it regenerates. We are dealing with a sea of starfish. The only way you kill a starfish is to remove its nutrient. And that nutrient is money."
 
If approved by voters, the proposition would allow adults to possess up to one ounce of marijuana. Local governments would be allowed to tax its sales.
 
Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca recently said he would lead efforts against Proposition 19. His counterpart, Los Angeles police Chief Charlie Beck, said he's personally against the ballot measure, but his department has not taken a position.
 
All nine former Drug Enforcement Administration bosses recently said in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder that legalizing marijuana offered the same threat to federal authority as Arizona's immigration crackdown. Obama's drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, has said he opposes Proposition 19.

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