Expanding Defensive Legalization

By Dave Anderson:

I wrote in August 2008 that defensive legalization of at least marijuana would become part of the national political debate because it is the most direct attack on cartel cash flow that is fueling the hollowing out of Mexico amidst massive political violence:

Quite a few people are willing to pay a whole lot of money for a variety of narcotics that are currently illegal but accessible in the United States and other wealthy nations.  This has created a massive black market where norm enforcement is through violence....

Bringing the drug market into the overt and open white market and away from the black market would be a significant blow to these insurgencies.  Legalizing most narcotics and then taxing them at a high rate is a viable option.  It will strengthen weak states where the United States has a strong interest for stability. This will occur by removing a significant funding stream for the guerrillas and transferring it to the state.    Prohibition is a failed luxury that I am not sure we can afford for that much longer.   

Tom Barnett uses this same framework of cash flow analysis and defensive quasi-legalization/decriminalization to argue that there is a new, and more effective rule set emerging in Latin America:

the only thing that rivals drug cartels' 90 percent profit margin -- and thus their ability to bribe -- is their aptitude for innovation. So no matter how much America seeks to crack down on transnational trafficking, the cartels will continue to find new ways to supply Americans' vast appetite for illegal narcotics.

we've seen a wave of decriminalization efforts across Latin America over the past decade, with Argentina and Mexico recently joining Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay and Uruguay in passing laws that make personal (i.e., small-scale) possession and use of illicit narcotics a civil rather than a criminal offense....

The ultimate goal? De-fund the drug cartels....

But in opting out of its Nixonian, drug-war bargain with the United States, Latin America is clearly rejecting our prohibitionist model. To the extent that the new moderate rule set proves successful, we'll see growing pressure within our own union to "import" it as a less onerous and cheaper alternative

Licit marijuana and medically available hard drugs are significantly cheaper than the street or wholesale price of the same compounds on the black market.  Squeezing the profits from the black market by decriminalizing THC will be a significant kink in the cash flow of non-state actors whose primary means of agreement enforcement is the threat or actualization of violence.