We smoke, they burn

I bet if you really tried, really took the time to drudge through the depths of your contacts list, you could be at an ATM by this evening and smoking weed by tonight. From “for tobacco use only” glassware to Apr. 20, marijuana culture permeates American society. With annual prevalence of cannabis consumption in America roughly doubling that of the Dutch and their infamous Amsterdam, we are home to a marijuana market valued in the tens of billions. And due to current prohibition, this market has been forced underground, to the great peril of our neighbors to the south.

According to the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness (IMCO), America’s insatiable lungs get anywhere from 40 percent to 70 percent of their weed from Mexico, filling the pockets of Mexico’s drug traffickers with about $2 billion a year. This lucrative drug trade, second only to the billions in cocaine moving north across the border, brings with it violence on a grand scale. It is estimated that about 60,000 have died in Mexico during the last six years due to organized crime. American families are torn apart directly by drug addiction, Mexican families are torn apart by the industry these drug addictions support.

It’s time to be realistic. The war on drugs is ineffective, is laughable in regards to marijuana and structures a playing field that breeds violence and corruption. I grant that solving a problem takes time, but our solution cannot be tolerated when it creates greater problems (how many violent stoners do you know?). The government battles our demand-created drug trade with supply-side reductions. This means the American people are demanding crop fields that the American government is then decimating, leaving farmers in the crossfire of hypocrisy. People always cite that marijuana use has never killed anyone. Sure, that may be true directly, but indirectly it kills on a mass scale. If marijuana isn’t harmful itself, but its legal status is, then something has got to give.

And on Election Day something did. Initiative 502 in Washington and Amendment 64 in Colorado legalized recreational marijuana use and established plans for the taxation of its sale. Besides increasing personal freedom, exemplifying democracy, battling the deficit and all of that jazz, this dealt a huge blow to the Mexican drug trade. As marijuana is illegally transported out of Washington and Colorado to neighboring states, as is most certainly happening even as you read, demand for the Mexican greenery will shrink. In fact, IMCO figures, adjusting for quality and adding transportation costs, that American weed, from Colorado and Washington, will undercut the Mexican counterpart in almost all areas of America except a few border states. They estimate a loss of $1.4 billion a year for Mexican marijuana traffickers due to the propositions passed on Election Day.

However, the positive externalities don’t stop at marijuana. Drug trafficking comes with huge unavoidable overhead costs, from bribery to the protection of territory. Thus other drugs making their way into the U.S. will be less competitive when compared to the U.S. version, cutting into Mexican cartels’ profits yet again. At last, a few bullet points on the laundry list of problems created by American excesses will remain where they should, in America.

However, this legislation is only a small step, as the viability of a taxable market for federally prohibited substances lies at the mercy of the feds. So now we face another battle because of this legislation, with the states in one corner and the federal government in the other.

I implore you to look past the immediate obvious effects of this legislation. This is about making sure American problems are isolated to America. If we are proving time and time again that we, as Americans, will not stop consuming currently illicit drugs, then we should be mature enough to not create legislation prohibiting their use, which only effectively creates lucrative black markets. I don’t care whether you have asthma or are using the margin of this article to roll a joint; this is not an issue of the consumption of marijuana. People are always going to be smoking weed in America, resulting in debatably minor personal consequences and undeniable international impacts.

I could cite an elimination of the estimated $13.7 billion a year spent on marijuana prohibition, comparable tax revenues available for the government, a reduction in the incarceration of non-violent drug offenders on a mass scale, etc., but those benefits are secondary to just being adults about this and ceasing to humor arguments that pretend legalization would do more harm than good.