Weed Dealer Shooting Rings in Another Year of Illegal Marijuana
Does this sound familiar? "Respectable" young man who was selling weed out of his pricey apartment gets shot and robbed by weed customers; media coverage ensues. It should—it's happened again. An appropriate celebration for the defeat of weed legalization.
A month ago, Pace University student Max Moreno was shot and killed in his Financial District high-rise apartment by two men who knew he was selling herb. And Monday night, 24 year-old Alex Bongard was shot in the chest (but not killed) in his "$2,500-a-month Bleecker Street pad" by two men who reportedly came over to buy weed from him. Bongard's mom is a senior vice president at NYU. Drugs are a great uniter of all socioeconomic types.
The other shooting victim, Lucas Hinde, 31, recently served state prison time in Arizona for a marijuana-related conviction. Less than a month after his November 2009 parole, he led Utah cops on a wild, 130-mph chase through the desert in a car loaded with pot
College-educated, not desperately poor young men and women have been getting tastes of dramatic drug crime since, oh, Prohibition. But whereas sociological and legal changes usually occur when the ruling class sees their own children imperiled by some previously unseen danger, in the case of marijuana, we've just kept it illegal, opening the door for all sorts of crimes like this, which take place every day across America. To all those who voted "No" on Prop 19: those who rob unsuspecting weed dealers for a living salute you.