Is human nature or past actions the best way to tell how someone will act in the future?
When a world-renowned columnist wrote last Sunday that it was stupid to think criminals would stop being criminals if marijuana was legalized, he made a huge leap in judgment that pretty much said all crimes are the same.

"They'll just move on to other criminal activity," he said, or something along those lines. I can get his quotes wrong, or make them up, because he'll never read this.
Do people in the drug business usually take part in other criminal activities? A lot of them do. People who smoke pot have been known to steal stuff, break into houses, occasionally shoplift. And they'll all say the same thing: I was doing those things to support my drug habit.

But does everybody who smokes pot do those things? Of course not. If you want to make that argument, you can apply it to anything. I bet most of those criminals, if not all of them, drive cars! The next time you see somebody driving a car, you better keep a close eye on them! They might be getting ready to commit a crime!

So, let's say they legalize marijuana and you can go into any store and buy whatever you need. Going by this world-renowned columnist's logic, this means as soon as they buy their marijuana, they'll stand in the parking lot looking for a victim to rape or murder, because not only must they commit a crime, but it's perfectly reasonable to think pot smoking automatically leads to rape and murder. There is no in between area for these crimes.

Any kid on the schoolyard can tell you that as soon as you give the bully what he wants either the harassment will stop or it won't. You can put this on human nature. Some bullies just want what you have and others just want to harass you until they're bored.

But it could also be past actions. If the bully sees that his (or her) actions will get them free stuff, they're going to keep on doing it, because it beats the heck out of having to work to earn something.
This is all coming about because the U.S. Attorney General has pretty much said federal officers will no longer go after medical marijuana dealers in states where such a thing is legal. Previous administrations have ignored state laws and arrested people who were allowed to sell medical marijuana.

This brings up the age-old argument of why is beer legal and marijuana isn't? Sure, there's probably no sane reason why cocaine or heroin or, God forbid, meth would be legal and sitting pretty on store shelves. But beer and marijuana both come from natural ingredients and, if you know what you're doing, you can make both on your own.

Getting drunk does have the tendency to make people mean and belligerent while marijuana tends to leave you laid out and "stoned," and we are a violent society, so maybe there's something there.
And marijuana has been said to destroy brain cells, but alcohol will ruin your liver. So, you could either end up a blubbering head case or in constant pain while you await a transplant. Or you could show some sense and choose neither.

Back to the crime aspect. Once a criminal, always a criminal? Or if your criminal activity is based upon one thing and you can suddenly go to the store and buy that one thing, does crime no longer enter your mind?

But in fairness to the world-renowned columnist, he was talking about the people who sell the marijuana, you know, the marijuana kingpins. What's that? When was the last time a marijuana kingpin was arrested?

OK, I will admit that most marijuana arrests occur not because a cop knows the criminal has it, but because somebody with 20 pounds of marijuana in the car has lost what few marbles they have left and are blowing through a 45 mph zone at 80 mph and get pulled over for speeding.

Now legalize marijuana and the crime becomes nothing more than a speeding ticket, unless the driver is high and then it becomes a DUI. Under such circumstances the cop's time is freed up (doesn't take long to write a ticket) and the court system doesn't get clogged up. And there is even some law enforcement people who now think marijuana possession shouldn't be anymore than a citation.

Would legalizing marijuana stop crime? Of course not. But it would cut a lot of it down, despite some people's beliefs. And stopping some crime would make a difference. But you probably won't believe that until your house is broken into and the person that did it says they heard you had some stuff they could trade for marijuana.

You know, stores long ago stopped taking trades for the items they stock.

michael.thomason@advocateanddemocrat.com | 442-4575