Legalization of drugs is cutting into the profit margins of drug cartels. Just like ending alcohol prohibition ended alcohol smuggling and alcohol mafia dealings. Are the DEA and the US prison industry interested in keeping up the war against marijuana?
“Is it hurting the cartels? Yes. The cartels are criminal organizations that were making as much as 35-40 percent of their income from marijuana,” Nelson said, “They aren’t able to move as much cannabis inside the US now.”
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In 2012, a study by the Mexican Competitiveness Institute found that US state legalization would cut into cartel business and take over about 30 percent of their market.
Former DEA senior intelligence specialist Sean Dunagan told VICE News that, although it’s too early to verify the numbers: “Anything to establish a regulated legal market will necessarily cut into those profits. And it won’t be a viable business for the Mexican cartels — the same way bootleggers disappeared after prohibition fell.”
DEA chief of operations James Capra told senators this January that legalization "scares us" and is "reckless and irresponsible." And the agency is continuing to crack down on marijuana.
Given the DEA’s historic relationship with the Sinaloa cartel, and the agency’s fury over legalized marijuana, it almost seems like the DEA wants to crush the legal weed market in order to protect the interests of their cartel friends. Almost.
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“The DEA doesn’t want the drug war to end,” said Nelson, when asked about a possible connection between the agency’s hatred of legal pot and its buddies in Sinaloa. “If it ends, they don’t get their toys and their budgets. Once it ends, they aren’t going to have the kind of influence in foreign government. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but where there’s smoke there’s probably fire.”
“Harry J Anslinger was head of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Narcotics which enforced the prohibition of alcohol in the U.S.A. from 1919 to 1933. When prohibition was repealed, Anslinger, in order to keep and justify his existence and job, created the Orwellian lies about a new killer drug – marihuana. […] In 1937 Anslinger had a hearing conducted before Congress which resulted in the Marihuana Tax Act and henceforth the whole legal injustice took off.” 
“The Dutch are known for their liberal attitudes toward sex and drugs: while not officially legal, marijuana use and sale in “coffee shops” is tolerated in The Netherlands, as is prostitution, most notoriously in the street windows of Amsterdam’s red light district. Pragmatism, the Dutch have long believed, is better than punitive prohibition — and they’ve got lots of data on their side.While 12% of the American population has smoked marijuana in the last month, for example, the same is