Is Going Green the Answer?

Ever read the tinkle times around New Trier?  An astonishing 76% of New Trier students haven't used pot in the last 30 days.  But what about this; by the time they graduate, almost 50% of high school students have tried pot and in a recent study by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, a third of teens could acquire marijuana in a day, 27% could get it in an hour.  Many teens report it's easier to acquire marijuana than alcohol or tobacco products.  Now some more numbers, last year 1.5 million people are arrested for non-violent drug charges.  Almost 750,000 of these people were arrested because of a marijuana violation, that's a lot of marijuana, and quite a lot of people.  If the average inmate costs around $20,000 a year, a lot of money could be saved on the governments part.  Now, each person arrested on a marijuana violation isn't necessarily going to spend a year in prison, but it still goes to show where the money is flowing.  So what do all these numbers mean?  They illustrate a possibility.  Recently, Uruguay has decided to legalize marijuana.  One of the safest countries in South America, Uruguay still struggles with drug violence from within its borders, and with trafficking from its neighbors, just like America.  Much of the drug violence in the U.S. is due to Mexican drug cartels- who smuggle marijuana and cocaine on a large scale into the U.S.  Sure, drug violence and organized crime might not stop even if marijuana was legalized in America, but taxing of the product and beating out the prices of the dealers on the streets would collapse the marijuana industry, and allow the money we're currently spending on the war on drugs in other places, or against other drugs.  So is going green the answer?  Obviously, legalizing a drug has many downsides, but who knows?  Maybe it will be profitable, and hopefully it won't be as easy to acquire illegally as it is reported to be now.  

(Statistics from www.drugpolicy.org and www.cbsnews.com)