A common argument in favor of legalizing marijuana is that legalization would reduce the big profits available from illegal sales of pot and therefore reduce drug-related crime.
That claim appears to be on shaky ground in numerous states:
* Armed men recently broke into a Colorado site where "medical" marijuana was being grown legally. They bound the people inside, rifled through their belongings and made off with marijuana and guns.
* Three days later, five people invaded the home of a legal marijuana grower near Seattle and tried to rob him of his supply. The owner and a suspect were wounded in a shoot-out. But police say the victim, whose operation has been targeted for theft eight times, had nearly 400 marijuana plants -- far more than the 15 he is permitted under Washington's "medical" marijuana law. Ironically, four of the suspects are believed to have been smoking pot when they hatched the robbery plan.
* Another Washington man was beaten to death when he confronted a trespasser on land where he legally grew pot to "treat" back pain.
* Meanwhile, California police have documented seven slayings linked to legal "medical" marijuana in a one-year period, plus dozens of other crimes. In one case, a security guard was gunned down as he stood watch at one of Los Angeles' hundreds of "medical" marijuana shops.
"Whenever you are dealing with drugs and money, there is going to be crime. If people think otherwise, they are very naive," Scott Kirkland, police chief in El Cerrito, Calif., told The Associated Press. "People think if we decriminalize it, the Mexican cartels and Asian gangs are going to walk away. That's not the world I live in."
It seems the marijuana business and the crime associated with it are alive and well even in places where it is now legal.