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Comment by mbillie1 | Hacker News Reader

There's a difference between supporting a free and peaceful drug trade and participating in a very-much illegal drug trade. It's possible to be a hemp-wearing, tree-hugging hippie and be pro-death penalty - it also happens to be rare.

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the law has very little to do with supporting freedom and peace these days.

That is very true, but there's still an enormous chasm for your average person between being mostly-law-abiding (I'm not counting things like jaywalking or going 5mph over the limit) and participating in drug sales, which could land you life in prison. Hell, I think drug laws are incredibly unjust in the US, and that the government is overstepping its bounds left and right. By no means should you infer from this that I'm not careful of the legality of my actions. I think it's perfectly reasonable to assume that someone participating in a life-in-prison-risking drug enterprise would also be willing to make other illegal/immoral decisions - in fact I think it would be foolish and naive NOT to assume that as a default, despite the fact that it will of course not be true in every case.

Having dealt passingly with a large number of marijuana dealers, I disagree strongly with your assessment.

Do you have any statistics to back this up, or just the naive reasoning "Well, it's a /serious/ crime, so they'd probably commit others, because only bad people commit /serious/ crimes"?

I'm an ex-heroin addict, and you'd be quite surprised. At least here in Australia, that particular "community" is quite anti-violence, at least at the purchasing/dealer level. Move up the ranks and then that will change, however.

Overzealous drug laws make normally-regular people be defined as criminals. As such, they are forced into contact with other criminals. Some of these criminals break moral laws as well as legal ones.

At this stage those two thing (free and peaceful drug trade, and illegal drug trade) are very much the same thing.

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