There is also that school of thought that the decriminalization of small quantities of marijuana will fuel the weed wars in the streets, which police say has been driving city homicides.
The Attorney General said he doesn't buy that:
Hon. Michael Peyrefitte, Attorney General
"With maximum respect to those who hold that position as some senior police officers hold that position. I think there is just a general sense of lawlessness in this country that's unacceptable at this point. You have people punching females' officers and people abusing other people like that. I will not buy hook line and sinker that it is a marijuana issue. Yes you can make the case that in the trade people would get from other dealers and the sell and then when they can't pay, then they run themselves into trouble. But that has nothing to do with marijuana itself. It has to do with anything. If you sell land and you don't pay who you need to pay, you run into trouble with people. Bad business practices, worthlessness, irresponsibility and downright thievery. We are living a type of lifestyle many of us that's dangerous and that's lawless and I don't think that it has to do with marijuana. Put it this way, marijuana as of a couple days ago was completely illegal and look at the violence we had in that short period of time before that. This is not going to make it worse. This is not going to bring a violence that wasn't already there. So I don't think that just the simple existence of marijuana or the legality of it or the pending legality of it a couple weeks ago was what made violence so high/ I think that we have become very, very violent."
