If anyone needs an argument about why marijuana should be legalized, this would be it.
The shifting economics of the marijuana trade have broad implications for Mexico’s war against the drug cartels, suggesting that market forces, as much as law enforcement, can extract a heavy price from criminal organizations that have used the spectacular profits generated by pot sales to fuel the violence and corruption that plague the Mexican state.
Anyone who says they believe in ‘free markets’ should be for the immediate repeal of the marijuana ban. The free market will eliminate the drug underworld because ultimately, it’s less competitive. Billions can be used in more productive ways. We will have a new green industry for America (and these are jobs Americans would do). And finally Hershey, Coke and Taco Bell would see huge increases in revenue. Win-Win-Win-Win.
Ending the War on Drugs itself would reduce state and federal expenses government expenses by $50 billion dollars a year, almost enough to bail out a bank. We have spent over a trillion dollars, if you count back to 1971, when this all began. With that money, we created an organized crime machine more diverse and powerful than the Mafia, which was also created by a prohibition.
The War on Drugs should really be called the ’50 Years War On Drugs’ or ‘The Industry Against Drugs We Can’t Make Money On’. Or maybe it’s really the War on Drugs because everybody involved in it are taking drugs; Oxycontin, Viccodin, Viagra, Ambien….zzzzzzz….
William F. Buckley, a thought leader in the U.S. conservative movement believed all drugs should be legal on both libertarian and fiscal grounds. Come on all you free marketeers and fiscal conservatives. We’re wasting time and money when we should just be wasted.
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President Obama is set to send his 2016 budget proposal to the newly Republican-led Congress as early as Monday, and news of what’s in it has already begun to emerge–namely, plans for spending increases.
Dispatches From The Front 