I'm not sure that we will see the same thing here given what we have said with regard to our enforcement priorities." Basically, Holder is warning those that would try to sell marijuana to minors, that the Justice Department will aggressively pursue them. It would appear that he believes issuing such a threat, will ward off any potential drug dealers looking to exploit America's youth. Holder's claim rests upon the questionable assumption that drug dealers will stop dealing because they are afraid of getting caught. From the information given, I would have to conclude that legalizing marijuana would have little to no effect in reducing crime.
Another claim that legalization supporters make is that prison overcrowding would decrease. The statement has been made for several years, by groups ranging from law enforcement to political, that our local, state, and federal prisons are running out of room because of the number of people incarcerated for drug-related offenses. Now, advocates for the legalization of marijuana have arrived at a solution: Make the drug legal and that will decrease the prison population. Those that are incarcerated for marijuana-related crimes will no longer be imprisoned; therefore, the overcrowding issue will improve. According to Ingold (2012), Rosemary Harris Lytle, president of the NAACP agrees when she says: "In ending the prohibition against adult use of marijuana we might affect mass incarceration and its disproportionate impact on African-Americans and other people of color." She is actually defining the issue further by pointing out that a particular group of people make up the bulk of marijuana related arrests. In the same article, (Ingold, 2012) "Adams County District Attorney Don Quick, who opposes the initiative, agreed that 'African-Americans are over-represented in the criminal justice system. There's no denying it and that's wrong.