[polak]

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.

It doesn't matter if it wipes them out. They will lose 99% of any money they were making in Canada from weed. Just like that. That's not a small hit.