[monkeyspaw]

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.

[dinkumthinkum]

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.

[dllthomas]

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.