Take a look at preliminary violent crime rates during the first six months of 2006 compared with the first six months of 2005.
Violent crimes overall: +3.7 percent
Murders: +1.4 percent
Forcible rape: -0.1 percent
Robbery: +9.7 percent
Aggravated assault: +1.2 percent
Property crimes overall: -2.6 percent
Burglaries: +1.2 percent
Larceny-theft: -3.8 percent
Motor vehicle theft: -2.3 percent
Arson: +6.8 percent
Source: FBI Semiannual Uniform Crime Report, January-June 2006
With these numbers, overall I’d call the violent crime rates stagnant. Unfortunately, stagnant means that still nearly 100,000 forcible rapes take place yearly in the United States, and that U.S. citizens are the victims of around a quarter of a billion crimes per year. I find that horrifically ridiculous. Let’s stop wasting resources on such things as “victimless crimes” and start using our resources to drastically reduce the violent crime rates.
What do you think?
Tuesday, December 19th 2006 at 10:18 pm
But if we legalized victimless crimes, just thank of all the money rehabs,counselors,politicans, and law enforcement would lose.
By David Alexander
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. growers produce nearly $35 billion worth of marijuana annually, making the illegal drug the country’s largest cash crop, bigger than corn and wheat combined, an advocate of medical marijuana use said in a study released on Monday.
The report, conducted by Jon Gettman, a public policy analyst and former head of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, also concluded that five U.S. states produce more than $1 billion worth of marijuana apiece: California, Tennessee, Kentucky, Hawaii and Washington.
California’s production alone was about $13.8 billion, according to Gettman, who waged an unsuccessful six-year legal battle to force the government to remove marijuana from a list of drugs deemed to have no medical value.
Tom Riley, a spokesman for the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, said he could not confirm the report’s conclusions on the size of the country’s marijuana crop. But he said the government estimated overall U.S. illegal drug use at $200 billion annually.
Gettman’s figures were based on several government reports between 2002 and 2005 estimating the United States produced more than 10,000 metric tons of marijuana annually.
He calculated the producer price per pound of marijuana at $1,606 based on national survey data showing retail prices of between $2,400 and $3,000 between 2001 and 2005.
The total value of 10,000 metric tons of marijuana at $1,606 per pound would be $35.8 billion.
By comparison, the United States produced an average of nearly $23.3 billion worth of corn annually from 2003 to 2005, $17.6 billion worth of soybeans, $12.2 billion worth of hay, nearly $11.1 billion worth of vegetables and $7.4 billion worth of wheat, the report said.
Gettman said the 10-fold increase in U.S. marijuana production, from 1,000 metric tons in 1981 to 10,000 metric tons in 2006, showed the country was failing to control marijuana by making its cultivation and use illegal.
“Marijuana has become a pervasive and ineradicable part of the economy of the United States,” he said. “The contribution of this market to the nation’s gross domestic product is overlooked in the debate over effective control.”
“Like all profitable agricultural crops marijuana adds resources and value to the economy,” he added. “The focus of public policy should be how to effectively control this market through regulation and taxation in order to achieve immediate and realistic goals, such as reducing teenage access.”
Riley said illegal drug use was a “serious part of the economy,” but he rejected the notion of an economic argument for legalizing marijuana.
He said marijuana use was an “inherently harmful activity” with serious physical and mental health consequences. He said more American teens were in treatment centers for marijuana dependency than for all other drugs combined.