Before you consider voting in favor of legalizing marijuana, take a stroll through the Boston Common or any city playground. I guarantee you will see people smoking pot. You — and any kids with you — will inhale pot smoke.

What you won’t see is cops arresting the potheads — possession of less than an ounce is a civil infraction — or in all likelihood, even see them writing up dope smokers with $100 citations.

With everything else the police have to do on crime-plagued streets, someone smoking a joint is the least of their worries. Boston police don’t even track how many pot citations they issue, and privately, officials admit, street cops largely don’t bother writing up the notoriously unenforceable fines.

Now, in the midst of a drug overdose crisis, as parents are doing everything they can to bring up healthy, safe kids in the city, Question 4 proponents want us to make marijuana entirely legal, claiming it can be regulated like alcohol.

Their argument that we are locking up too many people for supposedly dealing or smoking dope is ridiculous. Last year, Boston police arrested just 272 people on marijuana-related charges, and they’ve busted only 156 so far this year. Those are for trafficking and possession of large amounts, usually a charge tacked on for good measure when someone is busted for something else.

The end users — who are ruining quality of urban life for the rest of us — didn’t even get a slap on the wrist. If you think pot is victimless, consider the drug wars that have killed thousands in Mexico and even in pot growing regions and drug-dealing neighborhoods in America. Every whiff of pot represents a dead body. Consider the dead heroin overdose victims who started, probably as young teens, with a joint.

It’s not that the cops don’t care. Top law enforcement and elected officials are worried about the effect of total legalization — the permissive environment for drug use and expansion of criminality it could foster.

“I am against the legalization of marijuana,” said police Commissioner William B. Evans. “We are in the midst of an opioid crisis and I don’t believe that legalizing a gateway drug like marijuana is a sensible thing to do.”

Attorney General Maura Healey, Mayor Marty Walsh and Gov. Charlie Baker all oppose the Nov. 8 ballot question asking us to legalize pot for adults 21 and older and regulate it like alcoholic beverages.

Proponents claim legalizing weed will reduce the illegal trafficking of the drug. However, just ask cops in Colorado, who claim drug dealers are still thriving because it’s cheaper to buy it from them instead of the highly taxed legalized version at a pot shop.

Beacon Hill lawmakers have been trying to come up with stricter laws so fewer people get hooked to opioid painkillers. Legalizing another drug certainly will contribute to our current problem that is resulting in a record number of overdoses. The Department of Public Health reported 1,531 accidental opioid overdose deaths in Massachusetts in 2015.

Instead of bringing more drugs to the free market, the streets and city parks, and introducing more young people to this gateway high, we should be doing more to help those already suffering from addiction.

Jaclyn Cashman co-hosts “Morning Meeting” from ?9 a.m. to noon on Boston Herald Radio. Follow her on Twitter at ?@Jaclyn?Cashman.