Keith Humphreys flags a year-old paper (pdf) from Jonathan Caulkins and Eric Sevigney:
Because U.S. legalization of production, manufacture and sale of cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine would do significant financial damage to the Mexican drug gangs, many people believe that decriminalization of these substances (conceptualized as a sort of half-step to legalization), would do at least some economic damage to the cartels. But as decriminalization maintains the structural consequences of illegality in drug production and sales (e.g., high prices) the profits of the cartels would not be hurt at all by reductions in criminal penalties on U.S. drug users. Indeed, to the extent that decriminalization leads more people to be comfortable trying drugs, it would make the Mexican situation worse by providing more profit to the gangs: Same high prices, more customers.
Just legalize it for adults, place strong constraints on minors finding a way to purchase it, and stop using pot arrests as some benchmark for police success, especially when there is an obvious racial dispairty in enforcement of the law. It's not that hard.
(Photo: a bud of Purple Kush, via Wiki.)
