@ Tore:
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You seem to think of alcohol as a paralell to pot, but it's not. Of course bootleggers and mafias had a hard time on the legal market because they did not make Cognac, Gammel Dansk, Aquavit, Scotch, bitters and the multitude of other distilled liquors and alcoholic beverages out there. All they could offer on the legal market was a tiny, tiny piece of the variety of booze available, probably not even at a very high quality. They were not really very able when they had to compete.
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How is that not a parallel if you apply the same situation to pot prohibition? And why would you think it would be any different? Once alcohol prohibition ended in the US in 1933, the mafia lost its alcohol income plain and simple. Furthermore, you don't seem to know a lot about marijuana to begin with if you think imported pot is anywhere NEAR the quality and potency and desirability of a crop from a well made hydroponic lab, of which there are many in the US. So why do pot cartels make so much money off us? Because their product is extremely cheap, even at the expense of quality, and that often leads the market.
If pot were legalized in the US and you could start your own business selling pot you yourself grow, then cartels across the border would have to do A LOT to change the quality of their product, while keeping their prices more attractive than domestic prices. I can tell you right now that it would be economically infeasible for them and wouldn't happen. The competition would be overwhelmingly uneven. You'd know this if you had any background in the consumer side of marijuana. There would simply be a superior domestic product without the shipping and smuggling costs, and availability would drive domestic costs even lower. Economics 101. And in the regulation side of things, if the US mandated that pot was not to enter the US from foreign countries, then you have even more reason to buy domestic product, and cartels would have even less reason to smuggle.
I honestly don't understand how you're not seeing a correlation between the two concepts.
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From what I've read from american history and pot, the amount of users rose drastically when drug laws were softened in the 70s when several states decriminalized and Alaska legalized and if that would happen again, it would mean a vast expansion of the market - a scenario that has also taken place in other countries. That could easily help make up for loss of customers to other producers.
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Of course the amount of users will rise. It's freaking not illegal to use something, then people aren't going to have legal reservations about using it. You don't have to explain that to me.
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In a world of legal pot where growers are abundant, people are gonna sell (taxation or not) and the government will have no way of regulating that market. Cartels and other exploiters/criminals could thrive in such an environment and use it to push harder drugs which would still be illegal. I'm sure they'd love the opportunity.
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Yes, an organized criminal group who's main income is derived from drug sales would take a hit from the loss of pot sales... And would try to make up for it by focusing efforts in the sale of other drugs. But you have to realize something... If you're a company and one of your products are lost and no longer in your inventory/demand, to maintain a margin of profit you will have to raise prices of your remaining inventory to compensate for the lost income. What this does is make it harder for the buyers of your other inventory to afford those products. You can either lower your profit margin or take the loss. In the case of drug cartels, the lost inventory is a pretty huge loss, and the lost customers due to higher prices can equal a high loss. So at least you know that you're putting a huge dent in their wallets, or shutting them down from that specific market, or both. Economics applies to drug cartels just like it applies to any other business. The same concepts are in play.
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In Netherlands after legalization, organized (and unorganized) crime increased drastically. The amount of users also increased, both for marijuana and harder drugs. Netherlands has also since become a large exporter of drugs to other countries, such as XTC pills. In Portugal, decriminalization led to an increase in users and drug-related deaths (homicides/suicides/overdoses). You should assume the same thing can happen in the US.
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You do know Pot wasn't the only thing decriminalized right? I've actually been to Amsterdam and enjoyed it for several days before the more recent crackdown on shrooms and the many coffee houses, leading to a massive consolidation. The headshops there contained all the crap that's illegal in the states... 2cB and all its cousins, Salvia, Shrooms, and even peyote cacti. To pin crime increase on Marijuana in Netherlands specifically is something you're going to have to prove with specific statistics.
And if you can actually sit there and say the amount of
marijuana users increased drastically in the Netherlands and NOT attribute it to the tourists who go there all the time for multiple purposes, then you're leaving out pertinent details. As for where the increase of crime is coming from, I would naturally ask for your statistics, but then I'd already naturally assume they came from the increase of tourism and the number of people going there, that contributed to the increase of instances, whether drug related or not.
I'm pretty sure if pot and shrooms were legal all over the world, Amsterdam would be a pretty quiet place. So using that as a comparative is wildly speculative.
As far as your Portugal comparison.. I'm going to have to ask you what drug you're talking about, because I can bet my life there hasn't been a weed overdose in the history of weed. Also, Ecstasy is illegal in Netherlands as well. That has nothing to do with decriminalization policy of pot in the US.
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This bit is quite manipulative because you write that negative effects of pot are at best debatable. Yes, in a way they are, but probably not in the way you think. What scientific studies show is that marijuana use does correlate positively with problems like anxiety, depression and schizophrenia.
What's debatable is why that is. People who are pro-legalization desperately want to believe that the marijuana is not a causal factor in all this, that it's just a trend that sick people like to smoke or at worst exacerbate their problems or cause "latent" illnesses to emerge. Exacerbation of such problems would be a very negative effect and so should anyways be taken into account when considering legalization.
If you want a scientific source, you could take a look at this recent paper :
Link : Cannabis use and risk of psychotic or affective mental health outcomes: a systematic review : The Lancet
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First of all, The Lancet? The same folks who headed the horribly flawed Autism - Vaccine study in 98' and had to retract? Ok I'll let that slide and just concentrate on Marijuana, a highly controversial subject with plenty of political ramifications... Absolutely no influence there...
According to your source, fewer attempts were made to make a connection between smoking pot and Depression, Suicidal thoughts, and Anxiety... so they didn't include that in their interpretation... Aka, they couldn't find any links substantial enough. But what's convenient is that they were able to find a link between pot use and, get this, Psychosis. Do you know how broad of a term that is in terms of mental illness? Also, why is this report so vague? Please include statistics. We need to know the amount of people studied, and their respective usage, and resulting illnesses. (And not an umbrella "psychosis" term).
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Those who are undecided or pro-legalization should be aware that there is a massive amount of propaganda coming from your side of the debate which glorifies the effects legalization and decriminalization has had on other countries, that exaggerate positive scenarios as the only possible outcomes of legalization and say that marijuana does not have negative effects on mental health and more.
Of course there's some propaganda coming from the other side as well, but they tend to be way less fanatical about it (pro-legalization could be called a movement, but I don't think you can say the same about those who oppose) and either way, science and history has often produced results such as presented in the paper quoted above or in political reports.
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There doesn't need to be any current propaganda against pot now days. Pot has been demonized since the early 1900's. It has been branded with evil long long before the effects of pot were even comprehended by the U.S. It is ingrained in the average American's mindset as a loser drug, a drug that will make you stupid, psychotic, a killer, a rapist, a washout no good nobody. This has been happening for years and years, my friend. We don't need any more "this is your brain on drugs" commercials... it's practically a part of our manipulated subconscious.
Government has literally made smoking pot a morally negative thing. We've actually allowed government to influence our very own morals. That's gonna stick for a long, long time before it's rectified.
Any propaganda the pro-pot side can put out wouldn't nearly equalize any belief system between the two sides for a long time.
I don't think you'll have to worry too much about that.