Well, I know a lot about this topic, cause I live in Colombia and I know about the history of the drugs in my country and the acts from the government in relation to this.
To understand this topic, we must know the origin of the drugs. As most of you know, drugs like the marijuana, cocaine and heroine came from natural origin. The cannabis, the coke plant and the "poppy", respectively, are cultivated and processed to produce these drugs, all of them have a high grade of addiction. These drugs are illegally exported to other countries (USA and Spain, for example). Due to their high grade of addiction, it results a good business for the bosses, the 'capos'. Like in Scarface, a simple guy can end in a ultra rich capo with their army of drug dealers (cases like Pablo Escobar and the Rodriguez Brothers in Colombia and Al Capone in USA). In Colombia, for example, there have been doing a lot of operations to destroy the guerrilla's drug laboratories, coke and confiscating huge loads of drugs. Obviously, they spend lot of money in this.
Now, if the government can get money from this drug business it will get more than its year average incomes (legally), which can mean a good economical benefit for the country. But that isn't all. I think this won't help to decrease the drug traffic. If the drug producer country has legalized the drugs and tax them, they can receive considerables incomes from the consumers countries. But, this don't finish here, due to the addiction of these drugs and the good business, there can be some "independent producers" which can produce their own load of drugs and sending to the consumers, forming the 'capos' again, but this time is legal. But I know some of you will think "well, the government can confiscate the crops and laboratories, that simple!", but there can be a lot of secret laboratories and crops which won't be easy to find, because the government won't spend money on these searches and confiscations (trust me, if the traders had invented a lot of manners to send the drug to the destination, they can invent a wise manner to send them among the "legal" ones).
But maybe you can also think "but what's the problem with that? the tobacco and the alcohol have been legalized and never present this", well, as I said before (many times...
stare ), this drug (marijuana, cocaine, heroin, whatever...) has a high grade of addiction. The Alcohol and the tobacco have a smaller grade of addiction, besides, there have been cigarette and Alcohol companies which have privatized the production of these drugs, defaming the home-made ones (adulterated). Which can be another case...
*There can be that the drug production (let's say marijuana production) is privatized by a company (let's say Dont-worry-be-hippie.inc). In that case, Dont-worry-be-hippie.inc will work to have the better quality for its products. And (let's face it...) one of the countries which the world highest grade ever regitred of quality of cannabis was Colombia (before
we they past to Cocaine...
crying ), so the most probably location of one of their main industries will be there. Other companies can surge too to compete for the business (le'ts say Piss-and-drug.ltd) rising the economy for the cannabis.
This can be also significant for the different governments due to the globalization (look at Mc. Donalds and Coca Cola, for example), because, as Annie Leonard said in her video "The Story of the Stuff" at
www.storyofstuff.com, the corporations control the 51% of the global economy (I would like to talk how this affect the government, but better see the video at the first... tired fingers
sweatdrop ). So, by just privatizating this business of the vice, the whole economy will be affected to this corporations and will see another products like Dont-worry-be-hippie's Soup, Piss-and-drug's mart, etc...
*IMPORTANT NOTE: This last paragraph is a theory of what I think what can happen if the drugs legalizes and privatizes, obviously,
ONLY IN THE ECONOMICAL POINT.
ufffff... *press submit*
My fingers hurt....
