re: #65 SteveMcGazi

I think you could argue that organized criminals got richer after prohibition ended. Remember alcoholic beverages weren’t illegal during Prohibition, just the trafficking. From my admittedly inadequate knowledge of history, I do think that organized crime continued growing without any disruption from the end of Prohibition. In fact, it seemed to blossom, but I will allow that other factors may be involved. Point is, ending Prohibition did NOT curtail the gangsters.

Yet prohibition is what made organized crime so powerful in the 20’s to begin with. Before prohibition, organized crime was limited to things like gambling and prostitution. The general public didn’t really know about gangsters until prohibition. The big problem I have with criminalizing marijuana is that it creates criminals out of people who aren’t honestly criminals. You bring up some fair concerns but I have a big problem with punishing a relatively harmless vice especially while we have ads for other vices such as tobacco and alcohol everywhere.