...that just changes everything, if it's true:
The DEA has estimated that marijuana accounts for well over half of cartel sales. Legal marijuana would slash the chaos on our border and the impact of cartel operations in some 200 U.S. cities and in over 60 of our national parks.Now, for all anyone knows this guy just pulled that statistic out of his posterior. If it's true, though, I think it's safe to say that the wind would be taken right out of the sails of the people who advocate continuing the War On Some Drugs on the basis of "if we legalize it there will be junkies on the streets." I'd like to think that the argument that weed is a gateway drug to harder drugs has been thoroughly discredited; I know there was at least one study that did discredit that argument. And if profits from weed do comprise that large percentage of drug cartel sales, then I would think that when you look at it as a percentage of drugs sold by the cartels, it would comprise an even larger portion; i.e., the cartels sell more weed than anything else. Of course that's operating on the assumption that cocaine and heroin cost more per unit than marijuana does, which I would think is a fair one given the latter two drugs' potency. At any rate, though, it deserves to be asked at what point the cure is worse than the disease.
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