"What % of the market for alcohol is illegal vs legal currently? I imagine marijuana would be similar. You fail to rationalize a huge reduction vs complete elimination which isn't possible under ANY ruleset today"
Don't know the numbers on legal vs illegal alcohol, but taxes are high enough to make it still a highly profitible enterprise. Drugs nor any other black market will EVER be eliminated. The only hope for civilized people is to reduce the demand. Legalization won't do that
Keep living in a delusional world. I know about 2 people that can get me 'illegal' alcohol within the next month. Neither would make much if anything on it. I know about 50 people who could score marijuana tomorrow and make at least 1000% markup from the cost to make it. Your beliefs simply are not grounded in reality.
Drugs nor any other black market will EVER be eliminated.
The repeal of alcohol prohibition eliminated 95% of the black market for alcohol and 95% of the crime violent crime that prohibition facilitated.
The only hope for civilized people is to reduce the demand. Legalization won't do that
...So Proclaims Chicken Little.
The federal government alone creates on average 3,000 new laws and regulations each year. Almost every person breaks more than just traffic laws several times each year -- business owners each month if not week. That's massive lawlessness. In spite of that year after year, decade after decade for over a century individuals and society have increasingly prospered.
In other words, increasing prosperity is the nature of conscious beings. That occurs without the supposed benefits of new laws to come the next year, five, ten, fifteen or twenty-five years down the road. Got that? In spite of massive lawlessness individuals and society increasingly prosper.
Meaning, most laws and regulations are useless at best and counter productive at worst. Yet Chicken Little cries for evermore laws and regulations as he tries to defend useless, counter-productive laws of past.
Reality check: 95++% of the population doesn't initiate force against persons or their property. The reason for that has nothing to do with politics or laws. It has everything to do with self-respect and respect of their fellow man. In short, the golden rule prevails in man's consciousness -- it's not derived from the State.
"No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him." --Thomas