When the "crime" is removed, the "criminal" simply becomes a tax paying "legitimate" businessman.

Legalize drugs, remove the "crime" and entrepreneurial pot-heads have to get jobs while trecherous terrorists and war-lords in South America will have to find other sources of funding. Legal pot will compete with parsely and lettuce. Legal heroin and cocaine will compete with asprin on your pharmacy shelves.

The financieres of terrorists and war lords are the guys like Asa whose efforts to criminalize social behavior drives the price of weed to $500 an ounce and God knows how much for the white powders.

Six months ago we'd never even heard this ludicrous argument; now it's supposed to be so ubiquitous that only a few misguided people don't "know" that the war on drugs is a struggle against terrorism.

All joking aside, this reveals once more that the DEA is running Asa, not the other way around. He's even parroting their asinine raison d'etre for their existence...without realizing he's tripped over the obvious.

But Hutchinson noted that organized crime "families" that ruled over illegal alcohol manufacturing and distribution during the Prohibition Era did move into other criminal activity, including prostitution, gambling and the illicit drug trade when the 18th Amendment was repealed.

"They didn't go out of business until probably the 1980s, when we had an intensive law enforcement effort that finally had success," Hutchinson said. "You do not, by legalization, put criminal organizations out of business."

Oh jeez, he's filled my plate with so much turkey, I'll have a heart attack from all the slicing I have to do (whirrrr-whirrrr!)

Ok, Asa-me-lad, first off: It was legalization which did end Prohibition Phase 1. That was the whole idea behind it's repeal. And it worked. The minor bootleggers were destroyed by the economics of cheap, legal and taxable booze than they were by Elliot Ness and his bully-boys.

Secondly, because the illegal drug market was not addressed by PP1's repeal, the major gangsters were able to 'diversify' their holdings...into illicit drugs. Keep some drugs illegal, and they sustain a 'black' market. Simple, easily understood economics.

Most people who talk about legalizing drugs think about marijuana. Well, if you legalize marijuana, are you going to put the cartels out of business? No, you've got cocaine and you've got heroin," he said. "If you legalize cocaine and heroin, which not many people want to do, is that going to put them out of business? No, because you've got meth-amphetamines and you've got ecstasy," Hutchinson said. "Well, if you legalize those too, is that going to put them out of business? No, they'll go on the black market OxyContin," he concluded.

This is what's known as a sophistry: http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=sophistry

sophistry

n : a deliberately invalid argument displaying ingenuity in reasoning in the hope of deceiving someone [syn: sophism] Source: WordNet ® 1.6, © 1997 Princeton University

Fact: most cannabis consumed in the US comes from small grow ops - domestic ones. Not major cartels. The vast majority of those are in the confines of the Continental US (CONUS). I know who grows some...he was born here, is distinctly Caucasian in appearence and belongs to the local church (not mosque). He's not wearing a turban, but a baseball cap that says "Don't mess with the US!". And the only AK-47 he's ever handled came from a dead Viet Cong nearly 40 years ago who didn't need it anymore...after meeting up with him in a stinking green jungle. You want to call Mikey (not his real name) a terr? Put your Kevlar underwear on first.

Fact: most people who use cannabis don't want harder stuff. They are not ignorant, mindless consuming automatons but very thoughtful people who saw that hard stuff destroyed their friends. The only reason any of them have contact with any hard stuff at all is because the 'professional' dealer is always trying to pass it their way, when as I said, all they want is weed. Remove the 'professional' dealer from the equation via legalization and control, and you at once remove the availability of hard stuff and the profitability of it.

and lastly

Fact: The number of addicts in this country is directly proportional to the the amount spent on law enforcment as opposed to treatment. Fully two-thirds of all government spending on illicit drug matters favors interdiction, not treatment. The cop needs the addict, just as the addict needs treatment. But the cops doesn't need the addict getting treated; he needs more addicts to justify his expenditures. A very sick form of calculus, but undeniable. Legalization and control via licensing schemes would remove the incentive to continue arresting addicts. And the monies saved from switching from interdiction to treatment would pay off within 3 years, as the number of treament beds increased and the number of addicts being treated rose concomitantly.

All Asa has done is shown once again how fundamentally barren the argument for Prohibition is. When you allow the dog to chase it's tail, don't be surprised if the poor thing staggers from it's pointless exertions. I see Asa's mouthings as being no different that the logical staggerings resulting from an 88 year long game of tail-chasing.

"They didn't go out of business until probably the 1980s, when we had an intensive law enforcement effort that finally had success," Hutchinson said. "You do not, by legalization, put criminal organizations out of business."

We took away one of their illegal sources of revenue and they moved on to other illegal sources of revenue. That proves legalization works, not that it doesn't work.

Notice that we have been steadily legalizing gambling throughout much of America, and the discusssion is still open about prostitution.