“It sounds like another incompetent liberal who along with other liberal failures is incapable of enforcing the law and arresting drug dealers.”
You arrest all the drug dealers, and then what? Tomorrow there is a whole new crop of dealers, because you’ve done nothing to eliminate the profit motive.
I don’t pretend to have solutions to these complex problems. But how many of you have tried living in a neighborhood where large numbers of people were on heroin and/or other hard drugs? If not, there are some vacancies in my building you can try. Add to it the fact that Everett evidently hasn’t recovered from the housing bubble crisis and some other social ills. Now we are readying for legal marijuana. Maybe it will solve some of our problems. Maybe it will create others. Maybe it won’t matter. Who knows?
If you think other people’s addictions don’t affect you as long as the people aren’t on welfare, you should rethink that. We are in this together. Even if there is no economic or physical effect on me, I will always care what happens to our culture. Unlike Vito Corleone in the Godfather, I believe the addicts have souls. That’s one of the reasons I’m on this forum. People here seem to share my concerns about the culture.
If you arrest them you dramatically change the risk reward ratio. The fact is no one can deal drugs profitably unless they have political corruption and people look the other way.
Dealing drugs is very risky. You are not dealing with solid citizens. Many drug dealers end up getting ripped off or worse. Some end up dead. Throw in a high probability of arrest and a long prison sentence and it is not worth the risk.
You should also arrest drug users. They are vulnerable and will identify other dealers and users.