For today’s post, I’d like to take a look at California’s voter initiative to legalize pot. If the measure passes, and the sky doesn’t fall, many other states will probably be looking at similar law changes in the near future. Our drug policy of the last century has simply not worked, and it’s heartening to see a state attempting to legalize marijuana.

The statistics on marijuana arrests are really shocking. According to the Drug Policy Alliance, which is in favor of legalization, blacks are arrested for marijuana possession between four and twelve times more than whites in California, even though studies have consistently shown that whites smoke more pot than blacks. In the last ten years, around 500,000 people have been arrested for possession. That’s absurd! Think about how expensive that is for the criminal justice system. California spends $216,000 for each juvenile inmate in its prison system, yet it spends only $8,000 per student in the Oakland school system. It seems to me that if you really want to limit drug use, it’d make more sense to spend more money keeping kids in school, helping them achieve.

The economic benefits of legalizing marijuana are mind blowing. If marijuana was legalized and taxed at the same rate of tobacco, the money we would save on law enforcement and gain in tax revenue equals about $17 billion. As Nicholas Kristof notes, that is enough money to send every three and four year old in a poor neighborhood to pre-school. Or we could spend that money improving public school education. Or we could use the money to shore up border defense. Whatever we do, $17 billion is not exactly a trivial amount.

For me, the biggest reason to legalize marijuana is to hurt the cartels. Immigration has emerged as a hot button issue recently, with Arizona passing a draconian immigration law and many similar propositions being considered by other states. People are worried about violence, and understandably so. No one wants to have foreign drug dealers operating in their back yard. But no matter how many laws we pass, or how much money we spend, marijuana from Mexico and other Latin American countries will always find a way across the border. Drug importers are smart, and the demand is so high that increased patrols by border agents and harsher prison sentences will not act as an effective deterrent. America will always have a demand for marijuana, and that means as long as the drug stays illegal, violent drug cartels will operate in our borders.

But what if the drug that the cartels are pushing is suddenly legal? No one in their right mind would buy pot off the street if they could instead walk into a dispensary and buy high quality marijuana legally, and probably for less money than the cartels are charging. Very few people actually want to have to hide their drug use. If given a choice, marijuana smokers would absolutely buy legal drugs. This would severely weaken the cartels, and decrease deaths related to drug trafficking.

I’m not advocating drug use here. I know people who have ruined their lives from excess drug use. But it’s not true that marijuana is the gateway drug that people have been demonizing for years. Just because someone smokes pot every once in a while doesn’t mean that person will turn around and become a heroin addict. Yes, marijuana intoxicates you, but so do legal drugs like alcohol. As long as sensible restrictions are built into the law, such as making it illegal to drive under the influence, then there is no reason that marijuana should not be legalized.