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Originally Posted by blankall
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.
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Yeah you raise some good points. But what I'm looking at is those bootleggers, who as you said, had to legitimize and enter the market, and end up filthy rich because of it, but so does the state with taxes. And not only that, you now have a legit business that can create legit jobs that are also subject to taxes.
It doesn't wipe out the drug trade, because you still have different drugs available illegally, but it DOES for marijuana, just like it did for beer and everything else. That doesn't mean that the moonshiners don't exist, but there's a huge chunk of their market gone. So those producers can either go legit with the product they already have, or keep being criminals and venture into/focus on other things. You're not going to eliminate crime, that has never been asserted. But if you can significantly reduce it, while significantly reduce the police resources being used against, and at the same time profit from it, it just makes economic sense.
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Originally Posted by GGG
In the harder drugs side I disagree that legalization would increase use.
If I ask people here why don't you smoke crack the answer isn't because its illegal.
For the softer drugs legalization will result in increased useage because there is definitely a segment of the population that doesn't use because of the illegality.
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Yeah I meant increased weed use. No doubt the people who want hard drugs, and can afford them, are doing them already. No one is not doing crack because it's illegal. Just like no one who doesn't smoke weed isn't doing it because they've never been exposed to it or had the opportunity to buy, it's because they've made a personal choice not to do it for whatever reason. Availability is there for all this stuff, how to best try and control it, while helping addicts and trying to gain monetary benefits from it is what we should be focusing on, not how to eliminate it. You won't. Ever.