Do any of you really believe that legalizing drugs will stop the illegal drug trade or the drug lord violence? Are you going to legalize all drugs? If you don’t then there will still be trade in the ones that are illegal. If you legalize them all and try to regulate or tax them then nothing will change; the drug lords will still be shipping drugs illegally to avoid the taxes, regulations or price controls you put on them. Get a grip!
It could stop most of it.
“Are you going to legalize all drugs?”
The only illegal drug that has any real chance of being legalized is marijuana.
“If you don’t then there will still be trade in the ones that are illegal.”
That's true, but according to government estimates it looks like many thousands of tons of marijuana are consumed in this country every year, compared to only a few hundred tons of cocaine, meth and heroin. Marijuana is the cash cow for organized crime. Government estimates are that more than 60% of all the money the Mexican cartels make comes from marijuana sales. Some estimates are as high as 75%. According to John Walters who I suppose is still our drug czar until Obama’s pick is confirmed marijuana is the Mexican drug cartel's “bread and butter,” their “center of gravity.” It's what they make most of their money from and all the other drugs they sell come in on top of their pot and get pushed through the distributors that sell their marijuana. Pot dealers who buy their pot end up selling a big part of their hard stuff for them. Losing the many billions they make from pot sales, losing most of their income, would really hurt these organizations. Losing all these countless pot dealers out there they use to distribute their hard stuff will hurt them even more.
Note that Mexican drug cartels are not only in the business of selling all these other drugs, they actually already supply most all the meth, heroin and cocaine consumed in this country. They already have the market cornered on these drugs. It's not like they can just switch to selling these drugs to keep their profits up, because they already supply most all the demand for these drugs. When they lose marijuana, they'll lose most of their income and there is no way they are going to replace all those billions they will lose. They will shrink and they will be less of a problem for us.
“If you legalize them all and try to regulate or tax them then nothing will change; the drug lords will still be shipping drugs illegally to avoid the taxes, regulations or price controls you put on them.”
We probably will end up legalizing marijuana someday. When that happens and the legal risks are gone and big corporate farmers mass produce it on large farms like others crops, wholesale prices will drop through the floor. Think about how cheap tobacco is for a company like Phillip Morris. They buy their tobacco dried and cured in bulk for less than $2.00 a pound. Some of the varieties they blend might cost a little more, but not much. Pot may be more expensive to produce than tobacco, but there is no way that in a competitive legal market it's going to end up costing thousands or even just hundreds of dollars a pound wholesale. It's going to be dirt cheap. Yes, the government will probably tax the heck out of it, but even if most of the price someone pays for a small bag of pot at the store consists of excises and sales taxes, pot should still be cheaper than what people pay for it today. No one is going to want to buy crappy Mexican pot that might have mold or dangerous chemicals on it when they can go to the store and buy something produced in a regulated industry, a store where they will have a wide variety of choices where they won't have to worry about getting robbed or otherwise ripped off or sold toxic product, where they won't have to be breaking the law. Unless we tax it to the point that it end up being more expensive than it is today, there really shouldn't be much of a black market, and taxes would have to be just incredibly high for it to cost even what it costs today. In a legal environment it will probably be cheaper than it is today even with high taxes.
I don’t believe all drugs should be legalised. I agree it won’t stop all violence and illegal trade, but it will stop some, and if done correctly, generate tax revenue and help alleviate some of the problems we currently have with overcrowding of jails and the courts.
Would you agree that some help is better than nothing? Get a rational grip!