Quote:
Originally Posted by MattyC
Yeah, I think decriminalization of possession is more the way to go with hard, highly-addictive drugs for the reasons you mentioned.
Legalization will likely create more users, but evidence (albeit, short term) from places like Colorado is that the increase in rec use is quite marginal. However, that's hard to track without solid stats on how many users there were before. Some habitual users may actually consume LESS as they don't have to buy in bulk, which would then have them contributing more to the tax portion.
My problem with decriminalization, as I mentioned, is that it doesn't target the main reasons for looking at doing this in the first place. IE eliminating the black market for it and thereby reducing the organized crime associated with it, and allowing the people to benefit from it overall via taxation. If the strategy is to eliminate traffickers and dealers, decriminalization does nothing to combat that, and may actually increase it as usage sees a bump.
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Legalizing marijuana will have very little impact on organized crime, particularly the large violent groups. They make most of their money off prostitution and harder drugs.
In BC, we've got a de facto legal marijuana system, with the dispensaries. It hasn't affected organized crime in any way. A lot of the dispensaries and their suppliers are actually former illegal producers/growers who've gone legit. Now that they're allowed to operate legally, they're just making a lot more money.
When you legalize a drug like marijuana, which requires a fair amount of experience, knowledge, and infrastructure to produce, the people who already have experience with it are the most likely to profit from the legalization. The same thing happened with alcohol post-prohibition. The former boot leggers weren't punished. Instead, they became billionaires, as they had a jump into the marketplace.
By legalizing marijuana, you might be turning some criminals legit, but you're not going to punish them or eliminate the organized crime infrastructure around them.