Sooner or later, the growing momentum in all of the States of the Union to legalize marijuana will motivate the federal government to remove the ban on its use.
As noted by Juan Carlos Hidalgo on his blog on Elfinancierocr.com “… Today, after more than 40 years of continuous failures, we are witnessing the collapse of the international drug war, which has cost the continent hundreds of billions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives.”
As a major drug trafficking route spanning the South American producing countries to the consumer market in the United States, Central America is paying a high price in violence, not only has it cost tens of thousands of lives, but it has also added huge security costs to operators in the region, like a war zone when the battle is over, because of all of these points actions must be taken to “… be at the forefront of the search for alternatives to end this failed policy.”
“… Yesterday the New York Times, the most influential newspaper in the U.S., published an editorial advocating the legalization of marijuana in the country. The NYT notes that “There are no perfect answers to the legitimate concerns of people regarding the use of marijuana. But there are no perfect answers about tobacco and alcohol, and we believe that at every level – health effects, impact on society and issues of law enforcement – the balance falls decisively on the side of national legalization.'”
Read the New York Times article
If it’s better to legalize pot for the reasons cited in the article, then the same logic says it would be better to legalized crack and every other illegal drug.
But in fact it’s not better to legalize pot or any of these drugs.
Extra health care costs and other consequences of legalizing pot will cost more than any savings in law enforcement, and more than any taxes collected. Plus there will be more vehicle accidents, job site accidents, lower quality work being done, and less ambition in the general population.
Do you want bus drivers, truck drivers, airline staff, crane operators, medical staff, and cabbies high on pot? Well that’s what you are going to get.
And there will be more illegal pot being sold, not less. Taxing the sales of pot will increase the total selling price such that illegal growers & distributors make more money than they currently make, so of course they will expand their ‘businesses’.
The war on drugs failed in the USA because it wasn’t an all out war. Dealers were not punished hard enough, the media and certain politicians made sure of that because it played well to their supporters.
Singapore has a war on drugs too, but it worked really well because the penalty for drug dealers is the death sentence. It was conducted as an all out war, so Singapore won it.