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--no more "prison-industrial complex" (some 70% of whose inmates are there, for extraordinarily long sentences, for non-violent crimes, mostly drug related, at a cost of around $30,000 per prisoner per year and vast, untold social and financial harm to individuals, families and communities);
--no more BILLIONS AND BILLIONS of U.S. tax dollars ($7 BILLION to Colombia alone) to the worst elements of Latin American and other societies (Colombian military responsible for half the murders of trade unionists in Colombia, according to Amnesty International, with their closely tied rightwing paramilitary death squads responsible for the other half);
--no more BILLIONS AND BILLIONS of U.S. tax dollars for those of the thousand U.S. military bases around the world, particularly in Latin America, that have been "justified" by the corrupt, murderous, failed U.S. "war on drugs";
--no more costs, in the BILLIONS AND BILLIONS, of courts, DA's, public defenders, police and the entire structure of "police state" oppression devoted to punishing people for drug use or drug dealing;
There would be huge financial and social benefits to legalizing and taxing the use/sale of currently illegal drugs. It would not just put the federal and state governments in the black, and liberate our legal and police infrastructure to address real crime, but it would END the enticement to poor youth in this second Great Depression, to engage in drug dealing as the best option for employment, by the inevitable drop in drug prices, as well as ending much of the associated crime (such as weapons dealing, gang violence, theft, human trafficking), and it has been proven to greatly reduce drug use, drug addiction and all associated crime.
But here is one worry that I have. I frankly think that the Obama administration, while carrying out its insane federal raids against STATE-LEGALIZED medical marijuana dispensaries, is actually running legalization "up the flagpole." In Latin America, it is the rightwing presidents--the only U.S. allies in Latin America--who are the most visibly and publicly calling for legalization of all drugs and the end of the U.S. "war on drugs." These are politicians who are basically controlled by the U.S. on behalf of transglobal corporations and banksters. (Among them are Manuel Santos, the president of Colombia, the latest U.S. "free trade for the rich" client state, for instance.)
What is going on here? I think it's Big Pharma, which is now ready to capitalize on the legalization of herbal, recreational and addictive drugs. The U.S. "war on drugs" was used to brutally drive FIVE MILLION peasant farmers from their lands, in Colombia, for instance. Many of those peasants grew a few coca plants to supplement poverty incomes, along with growing food for their families and local communities. With the peasants cleared out, the big drug lords--and the biggest of them all, Big Pharma--can move in.
The presidents of U.S. client states simply would not take this position without some kind of U.S. okay. And what would prompt Obama, the president of our Transglobal Corporate Rulers' client state--the U.S. of A.--to permit them to do this? There has to be some big, transglobal, corporate interest involved. There may well be a big struggle going on between Big Pharma and its cohort, Big Ag, and the Big War Profiteers and their cohort, the Big Police State. But it is quite possible that Big Pharma, et al, has judged that the time is ripe and that the Big War/Police profiteers can be ameliorated. (The former by war on Iran? And the latter by having fun arresting the brown-skinned in Arizona and other states? Or maybe the country has been so bankrupted by the Bush Junta that they have to face being "down-sized"--a good moment for Big Pharma to make its move?)
The fact that it is the RIGHTWING in Latin America that is pushing hardest for legalization is my main reason for suspecting that the Obama administration is acting behind the scenes to give this idea traction. They've played Big Pharma's game on medical care in the U.S. It makes sense that they would play Big Pharma's game on this. And it also makes sense (the way anything Corporate-related "makes sense"
that the Feds would continue to try to ruin the small, enterprising marijuana businesses in California, prelimary to Big Pharma taking over this market--just the way that the U.S. "war on drugs" has been used to drive the small peasant farmers off their lands in Colombia. The Feds are eliminating the competition for Big Pharma.
There may be another reason that the Obama administration is trying to get the ball rolling on legalization and I would explain it this way: The Bush Junta was dirty on drugs. They were using the U.S. "war on drugs" to consolidate and better profit from the trillion-plus dollar cocaine trade out of Colombia (my considered opinion). Thus, this issue--legalization--may have huge but hard-to-see political implications, both in Colombia and the U.S.--that is, it is a struggle between the criminal rightwing (Uribe, Bush, et al) and the more lawful rightwing (Obama, Clinton, it al). (Sorry, but in my opinion Obama is neither a leftist nor a moderate.)
The Bush Junta's operative in Colombia--president and 'mafia' boss of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe--was/is dirty--extremely dirty--on drugs, as well as on the death squads, vast illegal spying, vast land theft, and other crimes. He was the cartels' president and ran Colombia just like a criminal enterprise--with the full support of the Bush Junta and billions of dollars in U.S. taxpayers' money. Uribe, who is now under the protection of the CIA and the Obama administration--likely because he knows too much about Bush Junta crimes in Colombia--is still at large and is freely operating in Colombia in, among other things, the political arena. He and Santos are of the same rightwing party and they seem to be in a serious (real) political struggle for control of that party and of Colombia.
Santos is strongly for legalization, Uribe against. (Uribe profited so well under the U.S. "war on drugs," he wants to continue that "war." Legalization would destroy Uribe's base--the drug cartels, or those that haven't prepared themselves for the coming "laundering" by legalization. Could there be a parallel situation here--that legalization would destroy the far right's base (the Bush Junta, et al, the Miami mafia, the fascists in Congress and within our police state and the military, etc.)?
The most intriguing and puzzling figure in all this is Leon Panetta, who came from Bush Sr.'s "Iraq Study Group" ("old CIA"--the ones who put the kabosh on nuking Iran and got rid of Rumself) to run the CIA for Obama (or to run Obama for the CIA) and then--after being greeted with cheers and champagne corks popping by CIA personnel on his first day as CIA Director (for this "novice" spy? ha-ha-ha!) and his rather short tenure there, jumped over to the Pentagon. (Part of his 'brief" was surely to end the war between the CIA and the Pentagon that Rumsfeld and Cheney had started.)
Panetta's first visible action as CIA Director had been to go to Bogota, amidst rumors of a Uribe coup to stay in power. He yanked Uribe from the stage but landed him on a "silk cushion" (cushy academic sinecures at Harvard and Georgetown, for instance), probably to protect Bush Jr. & co. He vetted and approved Santos. If you consider the Bush Cartel to be dirty on the drug trade--I certainly do, as do many other observers--then you have to wonder about Panetta but possibly the answer is that there are two main illegal drug organizations in the world, one that is going to be exterminated and the other that is going to be legalized.
Anyway, this is no simple question of right and wrong--or of bad vs. good policy. That is just not possible in our corrupt, corporatized, war profiteer government. The only question ever asked is, "Who among the rich will profit?" The rich have their internal struggles--which have nothing to do with the rest of us, except that we will be oppressed, impoverished and some of us killed, one way or another, by one cabal of the rich or another. I think that this is one of these internal struggles among the rich but I will say this: The U.S. "war on drugs" is so horrendously bad--so corrupt, so murderous, so utterly destructive of democracy and has killed or ruined so many lives, and is so twisted and perverse--that a Big Pharma monopoly on herbal, recreational or addictive drugs is to be preferred. We CAN'T HAVE and WON'T GET a good government policy, but we might get a less horrible one--if I am right about where this is all going.