While the tide is slowly turning towards legalization, I think it will be a slow process. The government still spends millions upon millions on anti-drug propoganda. The DEA like all bureaucracies exists to get bigger, not smaller as would be the case if they weren’t able to expend vast amounts of tax revenue on anti-pot programs. Despite their efforts, every year production grows thus enabling them to lobbby Congress for every larger sums of money.

Politicians will still be slow to lend support for the repeal of pot laws. They don’t want to wind up in sound-bite ads painting them as soft on drugs and hence soft on crime. It continues to puzzle me why most conservatives who are supposed to be big on individual rights are ok with the heavy hand of government keeping people from enjoying a psychoactive herb in the privacy of their own homes. But a lot of things puzzle me about conservatives.

The law enforcement establishment will continue to kick and scream about any attempt to legalize pot. Young cops LOVE pot, gives them the opportunity to experience the adrenaline-fueled rush of kicking down doors, foot chases, car chases and the general fun of manhandling drug suspects in the name of the war-on-drugs! Old cops LOVE pot, thanks to forfeiture laws they get to confiscate the cash and property of drug suspects without the inconvenience of a trial so they can pad their budgets and buy fun toys for their departments.

But despite these obstacles, I think eventually marijuana use will be legalized because too many young (and old) people have come to know that it’s simply not as harmful as the anti-pot propagandists are painting it to be. And not nearly as bad as the unintended consequences of the vast war-on-drugs. It’s way past time to legalize pot, regulate and tax its use and cut the legs out from under the criminal cartels that currently profit from its status as an illegal substance.

Other than that…legalize and tax te hell out of it
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Mere decriminalization doesn’t do this. But if pot is actually legal—legal enough that a theft can be reported to the police or a business dispute can be handled in court—then growers and dealers can quit resorting to violence to handle their disputes.

Another win: Reduced corruption. There’s so much money in drugs, there’s a constant danger of that money corrupting the police. Throw in the attraction of seizing “drug money” and you get both small-scale individual corruption and large-scale government corruption. Legalization ends a whole swath of it.

Related, and perhaps even more important: Better policing. When like growing, selling, buying, or owning pot is made a crime, there’s nobody involved who wants to report it to the police. So, often the only way for the police to even learn about the “criminal” activity is through confidential informants—who are pretty much universally criminals. This leads to all kinds of problems, such as smashing into the homes of innocent people because some informant lied or made a mistake. (And then, all too often, trying to cover up the lies and mistakes.)
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