In a reversal of its previously announced policy, the Obama Justice Department recently fired the first shots in what will likely end up a war on California's medical marijuana law, the Compassionate Use Act.
Supporters and detractors of the Compassionate Use Act must both admit that one thing it has NOT resulted in is an increase in violent crime. However, by re-implementing Prohibition, the U.S. Federal government is making California a literal battleground for law enforcement to fight it out with those suppliers who will step in to replace the businesspeople who currently supply California with cannabis, and who the Feds are now forcing out of the market.
Regardless of the legality of cannabis under whatever law/policy of the moment the government is trying to pursue, the market for the substance will remain strong. This is similar to the market for alcohol prior to Prohibition going into effect in 1920. In California, cannabis became legal for medical use in 1996, and has since grown in legality to the point where now anyone over 18 who wants to consume cannabis can do so legally. This has been due to a number of factors, including the usage patterns of cannabis consumers, which point to cannabis being used in ways less similar to recreational drugs and more similar to medicine. Combine that with the fact that the active ingredient in cannabis, THC, is essentially a harmless substance to the physical structure of the human body and brain (though the debate about the harmlessness of some of the cannabis delivery systems, e.g., smoking, and whether the substance causes collateral nonphysical harm continues), and physicians have realized that their potential liability for recommending cannabis to patients is extremely low. As a result, physicians have become increasingly willing to write recommendations for individuals who may appear "healthy" to detractors of the Compassionate Use Act.
The bottom line is that where a large market exists, economic principles dictate that supply will follow, whether legal or illegal. If legal, then the supplying is done in the open, and subjected to government regulation and taxation. If illegal, it is done by clandestine means, and the money that would be captured by the government through taxation will instead be captured by the suppliers of the product. Whether sacrificing this tax revenue for what is viewed as the greater good of making it more difficult/expensive to obtain THC is a value judgment that is made every time the government makes (or keeps) any product illegal.
In other words, in a Prohibition situation, the government has to choose between allowing the free market to supply and consume THC, or to expend revenue on artificially raising the price on the product, for the purpose of pricing certain users out of the market and/or acquiescing revenue to special interest groups such as law enforcement or pharmaceutical companies who have a financial interest in making THC illegal.
Much of the Mexican drug cartel problem is attributed to corruption in the Mexican government that allows it to happen. As this violence spreads north because of the United States' newly-announced policy of Prohibition, it should be clear that its advance is also attributable to government: in this case the American government allowing it to happen. For America, it is not hidden corruption, but it is a value judgment that is inherent in the publicly announced Prohibition policy. For our Federal government, and the millions of lobbying dollars at stake, the few hundred more dead children, dead parents, dead cops and destroyed families, are a price worth paying to ensure that it is more difficult for Californians to get their hands on a substance that, by any objective standard, is less harmful than alcohol.
