Quote:
Originally Posted by timalkin
Marijuana legalization will shrink the illegal drug market. Right now, the market is big enough for the cartels to operate in a more or less civil manner because the pie is big enough for everyone to get a piece. By shrinking the pie, the cartels are going to have to fight each other a lot more to assert dominance and control over the remaining pie. These cartels aren't simply going to disappear just because marijuana is legalized. They are going to escalate their fighting and modify their operations to keep the profits flowing.
If marijuana is legalized, it will be more widely available than it currently is. The dealers aren't going to simply look for legitimate jobs, but instead will target those groups who aren't able to purchase the newly-legalized drugs: children. Dealers will either buy the legalized marijuana from legal sources and sell it to children at a higher price, or grow/smuggle their own and sell it to children at a higher profit.
|
Actually, if history is any guide, the cartels and dealers will simply look for other illegal goods or activities to pursue which are more profitable. That is what organized crime in the US did following the repeal of prohibition. The mafia is still around, of course, but they are not, for the most part, either smuggling alcohol or doing much business selling it to minors.
There will always be illegal goods and activities to catch the interest of criminals. However, especially considering that the marijuana which comes from Mexico and Central America is of dramatically poorer quality than that grown in California, it seems extremely unlikely to me that once marijuana is legal in this state, people will continue to purchase illegal Mexican weed.
Even when it comes to minors, think about it: if you were a high school kid, and you had the choice between getting a dime bag of cheap brown schwag from a sketchy dealer, or finding someone with an amenable older brother or friend (there's always at least one), who for the same price or cheaper could get you the stickiest, highest-quality herb in the Western Hemisphere...which would you do? To suppose that they'll go for the illegal stuff from the dealer is like saying a minor would rather shell out $25 for a case of Keystone Light Beer or a couple bottles of Boones Hill Strawberry Wine, instead of $20 for their choice of Samuel Adams Summer Ale, top shelf whiskey, or top shelf brandy. No minors I ever hung out with when I was underage would have done so.
Will drug cartels vanish with the legalization of marijuana? Of course not. But the likelihood is that they will not fight uselessly over a dead market, they will simply move on to more profitable fields.