I’m not trying to make excuses for criminal behavior. The basic facts of the case show there was plenty of that by everyone involved. There was plenty of stupidity and poor judgment, too. I am saying that Prohibition created the environment that allowed stupidity and poor judgment to fester into criminal acts.

Alex hardly seemed the type you’d expect to be growing marijuana in a crawl space beneath his house. He’s in his mid 50’s, has been married for twenty-some years, owns his home and is gainfully employed. By all outward appearances, Alex was a law abiding, productive citizen. I certainly had no idea that he was growing pot.

I had no idea, but I wasn’t particularly surprised either. Marijuana is estimated to be the third most valuable cash crop in Michigan. The annual crop is [url=http://www.drugscience.org/Archive/bcr2/MJCropReport_2006.pdf ]valued at $350 million[/url]. It takes a lot of closet growers to rack up numbers like that. It’s a pretty safe bet most of us know several people with clandestine marijuana gardens and we never suspect a thing.

Last November word had gotten around that Alex was growing pot. And word had gotten back to Alex that a group of grow rippers had his garden in their sights. As a foil he set some fake booby traps around his yard. They weren’t armed; they didn’t even have any explosive content. But they sure looked real enough.

As it happens, none of the 3 rippers - all in their late teens and early 20’s - possessed the brightest of criminal minds. In their clumsy attempts to set up the theft they had managed to clearly telegraph both their intent and their timing. When they arrived at 1:00 a.m. that night, Alex was both awake and on guard. The upshot was a home invasion gone dreadfully wrong, a nineteen year old man shot through the chest, the lives of 3 promising young men put on hold while they face home invasion and conspiracy charges, Alex’s liberty in jeopardy for protecting his property.

I’m not going to argue who is guiltier or the degree of criminality shown by any of the participants. I’m not going to defend a homeowners right to defend his home or debate was Alex asking for it by growing pot in the first place? I won’t venture to guess if Michigan’s Castle Law giving homeowners the right to use lethal force when threatened with home invasion applies. Like I say, there was plenty of stupidity, poor judgment and yes, criminality shown by everyone involved. I am going to say what LEAP has been saying all along—Prohibition causes crime, it does not prevent it.

When a legal, regulated market exists, where drug users can obtain their drugs of choice, they don’t need to commit criminal acts to obtain those drugs. When was the last time you heard of a home brewed beer rip?

When homeowners cannot call the police to protect property citizens are then forced to resort to their own defenses. In this case the booby traps were fake. They aren’t always. Thankfully, in this case it was only a serious gunshot wound, and not a gunshot death. When Prohibition creates the potential to reap such obscene profits from an easy to grow weed, criminals are sure to try cashing in.

Prohibition is called a drug control strategy. In truth, it cedes all control over the manufacture of drugs, handing it over to criminals and closet growers instead. Prohibition means marijuana will be manufactured in thousands of hidden spaces, scattered in every district, neighborhood and zone, often in unsafe conditions. Prohibition makes these clandestine garden’s both impossible to regulate and highly vulnerable to criminal attack.

All wishful thinking aside, the hard fact is marijuana is here to stay. A certain number of people are going to use it whether we like it or not. If they can’t obtain marijuana legally then they will obtain it illegally—often by either growing it or stealing it. After thirty five years of a War on Marijuana it is cheaper, more plentiful and more potent than ever before. The only thing marijuana prohibition has done is to make criminals out of people who are not.

When our grandparents wisely repealed alcohol prohibition they didn’t make all of the problems related to alcohol go away - only 90% of the alcohol-related crime.