Anybody watch the PBS series on Prohibition? Recall what actually ended the Great Depression? Yeah - the repeal of the 18th amendment ended the Great Depression.
How? Everybody (except the Republican religious extremists who had passed the 18th) wanted to drink a few beers, so they scraped up the money to do that as soon as beer was available. That got the breweries fired up and they had to hire more workers who spent their wages on goods and services from other businesses that then had to hire more workers and ta - da! The American economy roared back to life.
Cannabis (among other things) is currently "prohibited" by the US federal government. Yep, if cannabis was legal it would be cheap and taxed, no doubt. That would likely kick those Mexican cartels in the groin hard, maybe throw the Mexican economy into the crapper too, while saving US national forests from illegal industrial level cannabis cropping by heavily armed Mexican gangsters. It may crimp the domestic US black market as well, which would be a bummer as I wholeheartedly support the Black Market.
It would also create a HUGE new domestic market and all of the appurtenant support businesses. It would slash the cost of border interdiction, raise government revenues and free up resources current expended on the US law enforcement/judicial/incarceration cartel while freeing LEO from that 67% involvement with the illicit drug industry they currently have. (Here, they just busted half a local police dept including the former chief for spending a ton of 'drug forfeiture' money on....cannabis and prostitutes.

)
No, it is much better to stay the course throwing an ever - increasing amount of money and manpower at an ever - increasing problem until 2020 when it is projected that 1/2 of all Americans will be incarcerated for "drug crimes" and the other 1/2 of American citizens will have jobs in prisons guarding them.
That will leave
nobody to pay the taxes to support Prohibition.
