I am not suggesting legalizing the marketing of dope, Sawzaw.

I'm suggesting that the forces of the law not persecute users, but go after the primary dealers of the drugs. Period. A user is not a criminal. Someone who grows pot strictly for his own use is not a criminal. Someone who smokes up is not a criminal. Someone who markets it in large quantities, on the other hand, is a dealer and a criminal, and those are the people I would go after.

I would make it entirely legal for private persons to grow their own pot on their own land and harvest it strictly for their own use (which any moron can do, I assure you...). That is no threat to society. It is the marketing of illegal drugs by large international criminal organizations that is a threat to society.

If pot were legalized in the manner I suggest, it would completely kill the marijuana business the drug dealers are engaged in. As you say, they'd have to find something else, and I'm sure they would (there's always prostitution, heroin, moving contraband goods, stolen goods, fraud, etc.).

You can't legislate ALL crime out of business by legalizing private use of one drug. But you can stop the police from wasting their valuable time on persecuting the users when it is of no benefit to anyone for them to do so.

Prohibition of a drug simply doesn't work. It never has. It never will. If you outlawed tobacco, it would simply create another vast illegal drug trade.

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I think the fact that Afghanistan supplies the vast majority of the world's heroin is one major reason for why the USA is in there...and they are NOT there to stop the drug trade in heroin. Uh-uh. They are there to manage that drug trade through their friends in that trade and make sure that the profits go to their chosen people rather than to somebody else. The CIA has financed itself for decades with laundered drug money by moving drugs in quantity out of Asia and Latin America. That's an old story. Look into it some by doing some Internet searches and read all about it.