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Comment by dinkumthinkum | Hacker News Reader

Ever heard of cocaine?

I'm not sure of your point. Cocaine does have legal uses, especially with ENT doctors/surgeons, who use it as an effective anaesthetic.

But the profit margins in the illegal drug market is largely because of the risk involved. Facing legal competition, which does not have to include that risk in its price, is effectively creating a market where legitimized producers have an extreme advantage.

Drug cartels have a myriad of other products, cocaine being one if them. All of their products are commodities worth multiples of their weight in gold. Taking marihuana away from them is not going to make as substantial hit to their profits as you suggest.

That means we should be legalizing cocaine as well, not that we shouldn't be legalizing pot. And reducing the profits (and thus power) of drug cartels a small amount is still substantially better than not reducing them at all (doubly so if it's something we want to do for other reasons as well).

Edited to add:

Also, while I have no idea as to the veracity, Wikipedia says that over half the cartels' revenue comes from marijuana, and links http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1269781... in support.

Given the high fixed costs (salaries, bribes, infrastructure) of maintaining a criminal network, I expect that cutting revenues almost in half would be a tremendous blow to their profits.

You said legalizing marijuana, not all drugs. and legalizing all drugs is much, much different issue. There is a big difference between legalzing just marijuana versus all drugs. I don't think the profits would be reduced at all, simply replaced by other products.

"You said legalizing marijuana, not all drugs."

Well, it wasn't me who said it in the first place, but that aside...

"legalizing all drugs is much, much different issue."

I'm not sure I agree - this is arguably the first step on that path (if we wish to continue down that path). I agree that there will be different outcomes.

That said...

"I don't think the profits would be reduced at all, simply replaced by other products."

I'm not sure you understand how business works. For that to happen, someone needs to start purchasing substantially more cocaine and methamphetamine. If the cartels are capable of making that happen, why aren't they making it happen now?

I think I do k ow how it works; I'm not sure you know how black markets, particularly those based on drugs. If you feel there is any lack of demand of cocaine or meth I guess you are free to believe it.

More than doubling your revenues on an existing product is never easy. Doubling production won't do it, because those most willing to pay will be satiated and it won't command the same price. Also, cocaine involves more processing and coca plants grow more slowly and need more space than cannabis, so even doubling revenues isn't going to double profits. It also takes a good year before coca plants can be harvested - and retooling a supply chain can always be expensive. Meth might be easier, but still suffers from the same market depth issue, and still involves building out more infrastructure, which is still expensive. It's also likely to raise the costs of precursors, which will again limit profits.

I really don't see that any of these considerations are any different due to it being a black market - if you think they are, explain why.

I am also not sure of your point.

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