oddly enough, when few things were illegal, there were no criminal gangs to speak of, involved in ongoing criminal conspiracies. true, there were gangs that robbed banks & trains, but they didn't usually last very long. short shelf lives were the norm, not the exception.

there will always be a segment of any society with an addictive nature, to heroin or peanuts. however, that % is pretty damn small, relative to the population as a whole. to assert that we should expend billions of dollars a year, to deal with that blip on the radar, makes no rational sense whatever. it just doesn't.

deal with the individuals when they can't control themselves, don't treat the entire population as potential drug addled criminals. it's cheaper and more effective.

with regards to tasers, the urban legend is that it's a "non-lethal" alternative. this is promoted by the manufacturers, to the law enforcement community. what they fail to make clear is that, for most people, when used properly, that's true. for some people, and when not used properly, it's potentially just as lethal as a bullet.

The so-called War on Drugs doesn't play well with either black or Latino voters.

I think Mayor McLaughlin is right to express concern about collateral damage, and she would be even righter if she expressed a wish that the ongoing disaster known as the War on Drugs should come to a screeching halt.

But there's no reason to believe she's doing much more than playing to the majority of voters in her district. It would mean a lot more if some mayor from Orange County or the Central Valley said the same things.

Right now the drug that causes the most trouble in the US is alcohol.  Not because it is illegal so much (though it is for under 21's) but because of DUIs, wife beatings, fights, murders, robberies, etc.  i.e. after the drink has been purchased legally and consumed legally comes the problems.

If weed was made legal tomorrow, it would just add to the DUIs, though it wouldn't add beatings and fights, I will agree.
Then the pushers would go more to cocaine, heroin, meth, crack, etc.
So say we legalize heroin which is probably the least offensive at least to bad behavior of the rest, the pushers concentrate more on the others.

I guess you move all the way down the list and have only LSD, and PCP illegal.  Just so people wouldn't cut out their kids hearts, or do the old James Brown routine of shooting up the county sheriffs.

You have to go get the crooks where they are when you have the personnel available.  That might mean their nap at grannys is interrupted.

As for tasers, what to you want the police to use, their firearms?  Or do you want them to go back to the old baton which caused many more injuries and deaths than the tasers ever have.

The were two deaths and one injury serious enough to require hospitalization out of just under 1000 Taser uses.

Evidently there were incidents where the use of deadly force would have been justified. But I suspect that finding is controversial.