Here's what I imagine would happen if you legalized marijuana in the US:
Business:
The same people who have been producing medicinal marijuana would continue to grow and would probably increase their production a considerable amount to accommodate the gigantic market that would now be open to them.
Those who had been growing for the illegal market would either continue to sell their product illegally, would give up, or would go to the trouble of becoming or merging with legitimate business (filing taxes, being legally accountable for their product etc). Because there's a cost to becoming a legitimate business, I would imagine that only a minority of the current black market growers would choose the last route.
Existing medicinal growers would probably see investment in their industry, or similar industries might expand into marijuana to take advantage and fill the demand for legal weed.
For the Consumer:
A black market for marijuana would continue, and prices would fall as it would become much easier to grow and distribute even illegally. The black market for marijuana would probably look a lot like the market for illegal cigarettes - only probably larger.
Provided that the market for legal marijuana was keeping up to demand and had enough competition, the legal stuff probably would cost around $13-$20/gram - it would be much higher quality - well grown, regulated, and safe (not laced with anything).
It may become possible to buy your own marijuana plants at certain stores and growing your own might just become legal. It depends on how they go about legalizing it.
For Law Enforcement
With marijuana legalized a considerable chunk of the soft drug market wouldn't need the same degree/kind of policing. Policing marijuana would be much more like policing alcohol and cigarettes (aka don't drink while you're high, don't smoke marijuana within Xnumber of feet of a building or whatever - it would probably still be illegal to smoke weed in public too).
Just like after they stopped the prohibition of alcohol, we would see the crime industry take a hit too. I'm not saying that marijuana sales has the same kind of big black market business behind it that the rum runners did, but I'm pretty sure the effects would be significant.
And the concept of making things legal to reduce crime is perfectly sound. Its better to make something legal and regulated than it is to make it illegal and out of control given that it isn't something really bad like killing people or impaired driving.
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