WTH?
I thought if these industries were legalized it would automatically drive organized crime out of them.
Why not a few terrorist schools?
Oldplayer
Organized crime probably was the supplier of women and drugs - isn’t there a big human trafficking trade in Europe?
Public pot, heroin and prostitution parlors are not “criminality”, just having them controlled and made profitable by a cartel is criminal
Dutch logic
“I thought if these industries were legalized it would automatically drive organized crime out of them.”
Oh yeah! And it isn’t just lefties that say that, we have many here on freerepublic.
That’s why legalized prostitution is so cool, right?
except all it does is drive up the crime rate, drug market, and illegal human trafficking does not decrease - it increases.
Dope use generates crime. Who would have thunk it?
I'm thinking of the kind of sex that's going to be vended in those underground parking garages.
That's what the folks trying to legalize them here keep telling us.
Amsterdam is a major blow against the doctrine that if we are open and encouraging with gross immorality then we will reduce or eliminate crime crime.
That's certainly the mantra that the pro drug forces use. Legalize drugs and gangs won't exist because they're a source of income. I guess common sense wins out over Utopian fantasy. There's a good reason why illegal drugs remain illegal.
I don't know about prostitution, but the marijuana industry is not legal in Holland. Possession and sales are illegal, but give these coffeeshops permits and allow them to sell up to five grams per persons, and allow people to possess some for personal use. The coffeeshops buy from the black market though, so of course their suppliers end up being organized crime. The coffeeshops are allowed to possess only up to 500 grams at a time. Many do so much business that they have to resupply several times a day, making illegal purchases through the back door.
Most of the mayors in the Netherlands got together recently and voted to push the federal government to allow for commercial production permits. At least one city is apparently going to start a city program where the city grows it for the coffeeshops. Most of the leadership in the Netherlands, and the people for that matter, do not wish to do away with their whole system. The majority want to allow for commercial production. The problem is international treaties and their agreements with the EU. If not for these factors they would have set up a legal and regulated marijuana production industry a long time ago. That would have taken a lot of money from organized crime.