tfs

Either the Dayton police have been up late staring at too many drug files, or they’re about to pitch a pilot of Unsolved Mysteries: Dayton Edition to their local network executives. It seems that the brass there would like to blame several recent area shootings on the assailant’s or victim’s possession of small amounts of weed.

According to baffled Lieutenant, Patrick Welsh:

The trend in several of the homicides and even non-fatal shootings is that they’re related to marijuana use and sales.

And the evidence for this? Apparently Dayton police found a man shot at a residence in which they had made a weed-related arrest three-months earlier. Let’s forget, for a moment, that the same residence was cited as an after hours alcohol distributor. This, combined with a few scattered cases of Dayton weed dealers being hit for either money or baggies prompted the Dayton Daily News columnist (of the story in question) to conclude:

Now, marijuana seems to be the dangerous drug.

Sherlock Holmes, this guy isn’t. Any Drug War newbie could tell you that the presence of the drugs in these cases are completely irrelevant, save for the fact that they’re worth money. And they’re worth so much money because of their illegality. Do you really think people would be shooting each other over this easily cultivated plant if anyone could grow it without fear of arrest or reprisal? Do people shoot each other over basil or tarragon? How many rosemary-related murders have we tallied this year?

Criminalization of plants is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you increase the value of an object and prohibit legal businesses from selling it, then you are literally handing a valuable monopoly over to the black market. That’s the market where business is settled with the business-end of a sawed-off shotgun. So, logically speaking, it was the police who were the cause of the very crimes that they were investigating. Elementary, my dear Watson.