How disengenuos." Most drug dealers, drug cartel members are committing "non-violent drug crimes" until they have to whack somebody. 1/3 of prisoners in this country aren't in prison for breaking up an ounce of pot with their buddies.
Take the profit out of selling dope and the gangsters doing it will find another criminal enterprise like kidnapping and home invasions.
The cartels have already branched out into other illegal activities¹, so the upside for revenue is limited. They are conglomerates of crime, and marijuana provides nearly 2/3 of their revenue according to the ONDCP.² Legalization would be a severe blow to the cartels.
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¹ They operate a range of illicit businesses from the regular extortion of street vendors to charging other groups for passage through their territory, to gun and drug smuggling, human smuggling, kidnapping for ransom, money laundering and the operation of a vast network of illegal businesses.
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch/Detail/?id=97554&lng=en
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²John P. Walters, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, said marijuana, not heroin or cocaine, is the "bread and butter," "the center of gravity" for Mexican drug cartels that every year smuggle tons of it through the porous U.S.-Mexico border. Of the $13.8 billion that Americans contributed to Mexican drug traffickers in 2004-05, about 62 percent, or $8.6 billion, comes from marijuana consumption.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/022208dnintdrugs.3a98bb0.html
It took a while to address all the extremely violent criminals that were educated during the prohibition of alcohol.
I don't do anything about my neighbors, some of whom I know use pot. But I would be quite willing to drop a dime on them if they were kidnappers or home invaders.
Are you in favor of criminalizing alcohol as during prohibition? Why not?