The war on insatiable need for drugs by americans and the inability/unwillingness of the users to grow or make their own is the only thing that gives street gangs power.
fixed it
Oh for crying out loud.
If they do make their own a bunch of tacticool cops break down their door at three in the morning, shoot the family pomeranian, ransack the three year kids room, and maybe confiscate a couple of joints. Bonus points if they can't read numbers break down the door to the wrong house. Then you might get a new door...unless of course you shoot home invaders that just happen to be cops, then you're a hardened criminal of the worst sort and must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
No, what give street gangs power is the government picking and choosing what substances one is allowed to put in their own damn body. Forcing production and distribution to criminal networks that operate by criminal means. How many people are killed over alcohol distribution these days? Criminal organizations funded by it? At least alcohol prohibition, misguided as it was, was done in a constitutional fashion before it failed miserably and only lasted roughly a decade before being walked back.
Exactly what the substance or commodity in demand is is completely inconsequential. If people want it someone will supply it, and if criminals are doing the supplying they will do as criminals do.
