Lawyers, guns and money: Three reasons to end the drug war

When President Obama was asked in March whether he thought legalizing marijuana could help solve the nation's financial problems, his answer was unequivocal. "No, I don't think that is a good strategy to grow our economy," he said. But his response is unlikely to quell debate on an issue that polarizes Americans. Even academic studies that purport to be unbiased arrive at very different conclusions. Here are three viewpoints on why the country should or should not decriminalize the drug.

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In 1986 and 1987, I was one of the "masterminds" behind the importation and sale of about 75 tons of pot from Southeast Asia in the United States. It was the culmination of a 20-year career as a drug smuggler, a deal that netted more than $180 million wholesale.

All that government saw, of course, was the sales tax when we spent our illegally gotten gains. Oh sure, there were some forfeitures once our organization was finally rounded up some years later. But had rational minds prevailed over the last 70-plus years, government would have reaped huge benefits -- in direct sales taxes -- from groups such as ours. Rather than accept the fact that an estimated 30 million pot-smoking Americans cannot possibly be criminals, our society has seen fit to waste almost $1 trillion on its "war on drugs." Not only has that approach not worked, the entire situation has been exacerbated by it.

A cascade of bad outcomes follows a policy of prohibition. The worst may be the dangerous, bloody criminal activity it promotes. In my day, guns weren't automatically part of the picture, but they are now. The illegal drug trade is the currency that funds and inspires a vast, violent and well-armed gangster class.

You've heard the news from Mexico. Since the government there has tried to rein in the drug cartels, 10,000 people have been killed. Last month in the state of Michoacan, Mexican security forces arrested 27 elected officials who are under investigation for their ties to narco-trafficking. In Toronto -- where I live some months out of the year -- police in April arrested 125 people in a sweep that netted AK-47s, sawed-off shotguns, 34 handguns and large quantities of cocaine, marijuana and Ecstasy.

In April in Los Angeles County, 400 law enforcement personnel conducted a "gang sweep" that officials said "dismantled" a dangerous gang that sold methamphetamine, Vicodin, marijuana and cocaine. It took a year of law enforcement's time to put the cast together, and the gang was responsible for at least one killing over the last year.