Also from The Policing Machine, confirming my suspicion that weed legalization likely wouldn’t change police behavior much bc they could always shift to adjacent laws.
Which they did.
What stopped them was the DA refusing to charge the pretexts, not that the pretexts wouldn’t work.
Just example #420,420 of why giving weed reform such a central role in the Reform Narrative is such a bad idea.
We should legalize weed because we just should.
But we should not do it bc we think it’ll move the needle on much.
Bc for prisons the effect is ~0, but looks low for arrests too.
I feel (i do not have numbers) that the same is true for driving with a suspended license. I thought it would tamp down arrests, but it hasn’t. Maybe there are fewer stops, but I would have expected … some change.
John:
I read Henderson’s Troubled this spring which swayed me on my elite view of widespread drug legalization being a ‘luxury belief’. Then I read in McWhorter’s Woke Racism that broad legalization is one of the 3 best paths to reducing racial disparities.
How do you cut this knot?
