I am against marijuana but I think it's clear legalizing it successfully starves the cartel of a lot of drug financing (and therefore we should both legalize it and have public campaigns against using it, ala alcohol).
Even the weird state based legalization has caused the cartels to pivot into things like avocado farming and mining.
Drug users don't seem to be overly preoccupied with what drug they use. Probably shifting them towards lower risk choices (pot, ketamine) and aggressively crack down on dealers is a winning combo.
(A lot of low level dealers are just graduated drug users but the line between buying and selling is a large one and dealers do immense harm while also shielding more dangerous criminals. Incentives against dealing incl aggressive enforcement are powerful at dissuading low level dealers, which in turn starves the criminal organizations.)
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I am against marijuana but I think it's clear legalizing it successfully starves the cartel of a lot of drug financing (and therefore we should both legalize it and have public campaigns against using it, ala alcohol).
Even the weird state based legalization has caused the cartels to pivot into things like avocado farming and mining.
Drug users don't seem to be overly preoccupied with what drug they use. Probably shifting them towards lower risk choices (pot, ketamine) and aggressively crack down on dealers is a winning combo.
(A lot of low level dealers are just graduated drug users but the line between buying and selling is a large one and dealers do immense harm while also shielding more dangerous criminals. Incentives against dealing incl aggressive enforcement are powerful at dissuading low level dealers, which in turn starves the criminal organizations.)