There ain’t nothing funny about wacky-tabacky when the guys with guns kick in your door and make a beeline for your pot garden. Especially when the weed farm is next door.
[Jeremy]Gardea and about 30 neighbors who echo his complaints say Alan MacFarlane’s annual marijuana crop creates an unholy stench in the neighborhood off West Third Street near Dutton Avenue, causes noise disturbances related to motion alarms and raises the risk of criminal activity.
That risk is underscored by the number of home-invasion robberies tied to marijuana gardens, including one this month in which three robbers wearing clothing to impersonate law enforcement officials burst into a Todd Road home, handcuffed two residents and fled with 30 marijuana plants.
Gardea said reading about that case was one reason he decided to erect a sign outside his home stating, “Please don’t pull a home invasion here. Indoor buds are next door at #116. See Alan.”
“When your kids are getting a contact high and you read about home invasions in the city,” Gardea said, “hell yeah, I’ll put that sign up if it’s going to protect my kids.”
Like Amsterdam and Zurich, California is learning the hard way that legalization and availability increase crime, not deter it.
Like Amsterdam and Zurich, California is learning the hard way that legalization and availability increase crime, not deter it.
Once prohibition was abolished, you could make the same argument… More liquor stores were robbed once they came into existence…
(we’ll just ignore the organized crime aspect that was put out of business as a result of legalization.)
Where exactly in this article did it say that the crime rate had gone up ?
In truth there is zero analysis proving the poster’s conclusion. It does get votes from the timorous beastie crowd, though.
Ladies and Gentlement, I present you with the new champion: The *stupidest* post ever to appear on Dvorak. Congratulations, lperdue!
If you would have allowed yourself to think for 3 seconds before posting this, you might have asked yourself, “Hey, what would have happened in this case if pot were legalized? Wait, I know! This guy’s home would not have been ‘invaded’!”
Your post bewilderingly assumes that pot is legal in California. It isn’t. That’s why people need to steal it. If it were legal, people could easily grow high-quality stuff themselves — they wouldn’t need to steal it any more than they would need to steal parsley.
Unbelievable.
#4 I know someone how suffered a home invasion and was killed during the attempt. The robbers thought that a resident of the house was growing “Medical” pot.
Consider it now proven.
Mr. Gnu hit the nail on the head. *golf clap*
The examples of Amsterdam and Zurich prove that legalization causes more crime?
Please say that again with a straight face.
Drug-related crime is far, far *lower* in those cities than any major city in the U.S.
…it raining dimwits out there or what..?
#5 Gnu, Comes up with the stupidest post of all time. ““Hey, what would have happened in this case if pot were legalized? Wait, I know! This guy’s home would not have been ‘invaded’!””
Umm cars are “legalized” and people get car jacked and shot to get the car. Convenience stores get robbed and the cashiers shot over petty cash.
Are you REALLY this stupid or do you just play the part on blogs?
#1 Great point.
However, the conservatives do have a great point too in that the “War on Pot” is a huge American industry that cannot be exported!!
Consider that keeping marijuana illegal:
> Employs 10’s of thousands of lawyers
> 10’s of thousands of police on soft duty
> clogs our judicial system – so more courts
> fills prisons – so more prisons
> more guns for the dealers to protect stash
> billions of tax dollars at work
> illusion for the public to feel “safer”
Other than is doesn’t contribute to GDP, what’s not to like?
Paddy just almost proved the argument!
Legal or not, anything that is valuable will sometimes be stolen. The whole point of legalization is to make drugs less valuable Doing this will decrease the violence in their distribution and the damage done to society.
From a foreign policy perspective it is unarguable that the inflated prices of illegal drugs, particularly in the US, has led to increased violence worldwide.
It’s difficult to believe anyone would publish a statement so factually incorrect and so blatantly stupid… let alone a Dvorak editor.
I agree whole heartedly with Paddy-O. Legalization wouldn’t stop someone from wanting to take your plants so they don’t have to grow their own. (after all why should they do the work when they can break into your place?)
The legality of posession, I doubt, would have had any bearing on wether those plants were stolen or not.
Paddy, If pot were completely legalized it would be like braking into some ones house to steal tomatoes. Don’t be so intentionally dense.
There have been plenty of home invasions for stealing guns;anybody want to outlaw guns for that reason?
The drug business is a perfectly functioning example of free market economics. If you really want to end it, use the one tool proven to ruin ANY business . . . COMMUNISM!
Just give away all recreational drugs – pot, crack, heroin, meth, etc – at every post office in the country, free to anyone with I.D.(to each according to their need)and PRESTO within weeks, vast criminal enterprises and the political corruption they bring will simply dissapear.
#14 Improbus said, “If pot were completely legalized it would be like braking into some ones house to steal tomatoes.”
Or, like shooting a cashier to get $20, or like shooting a car driver to drive his car 5 miles across town and dumping the car. All because you didn’t want to pay for a bus ride. Or, or, or.
Welcome to Realityland.
#10 … and all that to protect our children… um, wait, I don’t have any…
So, I assume that pot growing is legal in California only for medical reasons. If so, this creates a state sanctioned system of have’s and have-not’s. Not a good thing to do when you think about it, since some in the the have-not’s group will certainly try to get whatever it is the have’s, uh, have.
This stuff grows like weeds with very little care. If it were legal to grow there would be so much of it around on private and public land that stealing it would probably be encouraged.
Paddy-O — You do seem to have troubles with analogy, don’t you?
Unless you can demonstrate that people break into others’ homes in order to steal tomatoes or mint leaves or lettuce, you don’t understand the argument.
Paddy, you don’t live, work or post from anywhere near Realityland. From your posts I have to assume you live, work and post from Fantasyland.
Paddy-O — I find it hard to believe that even you don’t see the difference between a car — which is valuable because it *costs a lot of money* — and the idiotic idea that somebody is going to break into your house to steal a weed that, if legalized, would *cost almost nothing*.
Are you actually and really telling the world you don’t see the difference between a car and a tomato?
#15 “and PRESTO within weeks, vast criminal enterprises and the political corruption they bring will simply dissapear.”
Dissappear? Migrate would be the term, those criminals don’t just vanish.
#22 “I find it hard to believe that even you don’t see the difference between a car ”
I find it hard to believe that you can read a blog post. Reread and you’ll find that your 1st sentence is stupid beyond belief.
#16 “Or, like shooting a cashier to get $20, or like shooting a car driver to drive his car 5 miles across town and dumping the car. All because you didn’t want to pay for a bus ride. Or, or, or.
Welcome to Realityland.”
Those cashiers get shot because of convenience. Criminals know that they’ve got money close, and the escape route can well be planned. Of course houses can also be a target of a robbery, but, if it were legal, that robbery would most likely be for money and jewels and the like instead of pot.
That’s a bit closer to Realityland.
Growing a highly valuable crop in a residential neighborhood is really, really smart.
Gee, if I manufactured iPhones in my basement do you think someone will break in and steal them?
Pot is much more valuable since it is “illegal.” Make it leagal and it would be less valuable. But if you own anything, it is possible that someone may try to steal it.
Solution, outlaw all possesions.
If drugs were made legal, organised crime would not evaporate over night. They would simply move on to something else. Like infiltrating oll of the Indian casinos that have sprung up over the last 20 years.
Don
The solution is quite simple: Grow Hemp and let the bees crosspolinate them and see how his next crop becomes nothing but Hemp.
Google +marijuana and +”home invasion”
(http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&newwindow=1&safe=off&q=%2Bmarijuana+%2B%22home+invasion%22&btnG=Search)
and you get: 218,000 incidents.
Search the websites of North Coast newspapers and you find more. Lots more.
And, yes, “medical” marijuana IS legal:
http://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/MMP/Pages/default.aspx
Oh yea, this post should be under the heading of “IGNORANT NEIGHBOR.” If Alan wasn’t growing pot, he would be doing something else stupid to annoy his neighbors. He apparantly has no concept of the terms courtesy and discretion.
Don
Do they not have zoning laws in Califonia?