Letter: Reduce crime, legalize marijuana
Det. Peter Figoski, 47, of West Babylon, was shot and killed on Dec. 12, 2011, when he and his partner responded to a call in the East New York section of Brooklyn, where a five-man robbery crew had targeted a small-time drug dealer living in a basement apartment. One of the fleeing robbers, Lamont Pride, 28, shot Figoski in the head outside the apartment. Pride was convicted of murder and burglary and sentenced in 2013 to 45 years to life; most of the other defendants received sentences of up to 25 years to life.
Drugs and crime are synonymous ["Keep drug laws tough," Letters, Jan. 10], so it is no surprise that following the devastating murder of Det. Peter J. Figoski in the botched robbery of a marijuana dealer, we are hearing calls for tougher drug laws. The intent is to ensure that no more officers lose their lives in a similar fashion.
The argument is that drugs cause crime, and that if you raise the cost of dealing in drugs, via criminal sanctions, you will reduce the supply and minimize the amount of crime. This argument fails to stand up to empirical scrutiny. In reality, the raised cost of dealing allows suppliers to charge more for the risk they take. The added benefit of this premium inadvertently makes the tougher sanctions suggested by the letter writer worth the risk for the networks of suppliers.
Denying legal protections to a market has been shown since 1919 to make those markets more violent, and by criminalizing these markets, we are incentivizing their growth. And whom do we appoint to regulate these violent and lucrative markets? Our police officers. If our goal is to keep them safe, then we must stop needlessly putting them in danger through the criminal regulation of marijuana.
We must take the steps that can be proven to work. The legalization, regulation and taxation of marijuana must be considered. We could take our police officers out of an inherently violent illicit market, free them to investigate more serious crimes, generate the funds to properly educate our youth about marijuana and treat those who abuse it.
David L. Adams III, Selden
Editor's note: The writer is on the board of Norml Long Island, a group that advocates legalizing marijuana.
