THE ENDLESS CYCLE OF CRIMINAL DYNASTIES

Last week we heard that the Feds and local coppers took down something like 130 Orange County Surenos. The haul apparently included some senior shot callers, Associates and street soldiers as well as female auxiliaries who might just as well be considered Associates. The use of females as enablers and facilitators is nothing new, but in recent years it seems the Carnales have been relying more and more on the abilities of these associated females to do the work the males can't or won't do. Witness the Tablas kite recently published by KQED in NORCAL.

Despite the increasing importance of females in furthering the goals of the Mob, we've yet to hear of any female that has been officially recognized as a shot caller much less a full blown Hermana. Clearly gender equality has yet to make any inroads into the male-dominated society of La Eme. You have to wonder how long it will be before some bright politician decides to file a suit against the Eme forcing the Brothers to induct a woman into their ranks or face Federal discrimination charges.

The subject of female gangsters isn't a mere side issue on the larger issue of criminal gangs. We remember years ago when the LA Times ran an Op Ed piece by Greg Boyle. This was on the occasion of Bill Bratton being hired by the LAPD. The Op Ed piece took the form of advice to the newly appointed chief. Among the more startling claims Boyle made was that he had never seen any evidence of multi-generational gang families. He also called the gang phenomenon "dis-organized" crime.

Anyone even tangentially familiar with that world knows these assertions to be nonsense. As we know, there is a fairly high level of sophistication in the organizational structure of the Eme. There's the enforcement arm(s), the intelligence gathering arm, the communications system and the core of command and control operators. There's also the operational level in charge of the movement of drugs and money. You might also claim legitimately that there's the farm team comprised of set-bangers who earn their stripes, show heart and in doing so come to the attention of senior management. You could also assert that the Eme also has a political arm. More on that in another post.

The recent indictments against Orange County and Florencia (both of them numbering in the hundreds of defendants), and this coming after dozens of indictments since the early 1990s, has to make one ask the question: Is any of this doing any good?

The statistics seem to indicate that putting a lot of people in prison drives down the murder/violence rates. Even with the lousy economy, crime has been going down. This has created a lot of head-scratching among the stat geeks because the accepted doctrine is that poverty drives crime. That hasn't happened. We've got historic rates of high unemployment and a record number of people on some sort of government assistance and yet the crime stats have remained low. At the same time we've got California prisons bursting at the seams. Obviously, bad actors off the streets keeps the streets safer.

At the same time, we're seeing the same or higher level of gang prosecutions as there was in the 1990s. What's the explanation? It may be that gangsters have gotten smarter in the way they conduct their business -- less killing and more focus on business.

The Cosa Nostra learned a long, long time ago that mass blood letting is bad for business. The Carnales may be operating from the Italian Mob's playbook. Keep the violence to a minimum and solve disputes with either cash or some other concession. Tablas' kite seems to bear this out. He ordered Florencia to check the set banging and refer all disputes to Pelican Bay. We've heard this before in 1990s and to a large degree it worked.

And it may work again.

The bottom line is that massive indictments aren't going to stop the increasing sophistication and growth of criminal enterprises. But it may put the brakes on the sort of bloodshed we saw twenty years. Your thoughts.

IN FLORENCIA, PAISAS ARE A TAX-FREE ZONE

Thanks to an email from a loyal reader, we were made aware of a kite that Tablas Castellanos sent to Florencia. Apparently, a reporter for KQED in San Francisco got a copy of the kite and put it online.
Here's the link if you're curious:
http://blogs.kqed.org/newsfix/2013/09/17/111570/secret-letter-from-mexican-mafia-gang-leader-to-la-street-gangs

There's some interesting information for the diligent student who has the time to parse and read between the lines.

A couple of things were surprising. For one, Tablas is ordering Florencia to elect a President and a Vice President for each of the cliques and those two would be the "official" representatives and report directly to Tablas. This is a new one. At least to us. There always have been one or two up-status Camaradas or Associates from cliques who report to the Hermanos. But this is the first mention we've ever seen of the term "President" and "VP." We're not sure if this is just semantics or an actual departure from the traditional horizontal structure of the Eme and their associated street soldiers. If you can add anything to this, feel free to comment. President of a clique? Just sounds too corporate.

The other item is also a novelty. According to Tablas, Paisas in Florencia are now completely hands-off. No extortion or taxation. Reading between the lines, the Paisas are essentially allowed to operate without any interference. The question of why was made clear last month when a number of Cartel operators and Florencianos were indicted. Cearly, these are the Paisas that Tablas has made the alliance with (The Project).

We can only speculate on how this "hands-off paisas" will play out. Historically, Paisas were the easiest targets for Soldados who wanted to earn stripes and make some money - taxing dope sales, forcing Paisas to pay tribute to use certain pay phones, forcing Paisas to buy stolen phone cards from them, extorting the fruit sellers and ice cream stands etc.

You have to wonder if this hands-off policy will in time give non-native gangsters in Florencia a chance to grow, prosper and recruit enough manpower to actually create a rival force to the native-born sets.

FIRST A TRICKLE, NOW A FLOOD

A few weeks ago I was a guest on a nationally syndicated radio show. I was asked to comment on the usual topics - street gangs, crime, cops and prison gangs. One of the topics was the Mexican Cartels. There had been something on the news about a Cartel bust south of border. I happened to mention to the host that some Cartels were operating right here on our side of the border. And her reaction was total surprise. She said something to the effect that, "You're saying Cartels are operating in the U.S.?"

Frankly, I was surprised that she was surprised. What the hell else is new? Then I realized that the host lives and broadcasts from the East Coast. Despite the relative ease of getting news instantly from anywhere in the world, your average citizen on the East Coast isn't as up to speed as the Left Coasters who stare right down the barrel of the cannon pointed in our direction.

There was a time when Cartel-connected crimes were fairly infrequent. Now, it seems a week doesn't go by without some significant Cartel-connected news hitting us in the face. 

Every week it appears another Panga shows up in Malibu, Orange County or Santa Barbara loaded with dope and/or illegal aliens. Then there was the "startling" revelation a few weeks ago that Florencia 13 had a deal with a Mexican Cartel that was brokered, apparently, by Tablas Castellanos. Never mind that arrangements like that have been going on for decades. 

And the latest is the revelation of a stash house in Orange County rented by a Mexican National where coppers found over a $1 million in cash and hundreds of pounds of cocaine. 

It's astonishing that news of foreign organized criminal enterprises operating on the same streets we all walk on doesn't make more of an impression in the national psyche. The LA TIMES for instance ran a dozen stories on the Pelican Bay hunger strike. In the great scheme of things, this is a minor Eme-sponsored policy initiative to facilitate easier communications between the SHU and the street where you live. 

News of a foreign DTO operating out of an upscale Irvine apartment complex hasn't even been mentioned in the Times. The ominous stuff gets buried. The cynical gamesmanship of the Eme, on the other hand, makes the LA Times look like the Public Relations department of the Carnales. 

HUNGER STRIKE OR NOT?

The so-called California prison hunger strike is now into its seventh week and nobody has yet to land in the hospital. According to stories in the LA Times and other sources, the "hunger strikers" are only ingesting Gatorade. This is laughable. Unless they're getting food from sources other than the prison kitchen, the handful of strikers should be dead by now. The accepted time table is that you can survive ten days without food and three days without water. After that, the body starts feeding on itself and systems start shutting down. Seven weeks without solid food? Really?

The published details are that the strikers are a little pale and slightly dehydrated but still very coherent, alert and otherwise healthy. So what are they eating? According to people who are in the system or recently released, they're eating commissary or forcing non-strikers to share their food. They're refusing the prison meals but clearly stuffing their faces from other sources. The fact that they're still healthy proves it.

For some reason, this very obvious point is completely missed by the media. Why is it so hard for the media to ask these fundamental questions? I'll leave you to ponder that and feel free to comment. I'd love to have a rational answer to that one.

SO IS IT LEGAL OR NOT?

Adding more confusion to an already confusing issue, Attorney General Holder issued a memo to his local AGs on recreational and medical marijuana use. Basically, it gives local AGs the option of prosecuting if they feel that local pot laws are not being enforced. There's also some curious wording about what will NOT trigger a Federal prosecution. The two items are the amount of money changing hands and the volume of marijuana trafficked.

This sort of goes against the DOJ's prior ruling that armored car operators are forbidden to transport money from Med Pot stores to banks.

So you can make as much money as you want and sell as much pot as you want but you can't deliver the proceeds of the sales in an armored car to a bank. Is that clear to anyone?

It seems to be a set of laws tailor made for hijackers.

Also curious is leaving prosecutions to local AGs but providing them with a very thin set of hard and fast rules. This once again throws confusion on top of confusion and opens more questions than it answers.

Why is this issue important to this blog which is supposed to be about gangs and organized crime?

It doesn't take much analysis to realize that the beneficiaries of relaxed sales and cultivation will be the people who have always been in the business of sales and cultivation. Say what you will about ultra high quality cross bred Cannabis, nutrient-rich hydroponics or what have you in the world of gourmet Cannabis, the fact still remains that tons and tons of street dope comes from south of the border and from illegal growers inside the border. This memo does nothing to address that issue.

There's nothing in this memo about permissible quantities in possession, under cultivation or hauled during transport.

Also, there's no Federal mechanism to tax sales or cultivation and the States are doing a lousy job of monitoring sales. This leaves the door wide open for an untaxed, cash only underground economy. Basically, there's reason to wonder if this latest memo was designed to make the issue better or way worse.

THUG COPS, GUNS AND LIQUOR

The poisonous thug culture seems to have no boundaries. The LA Times reported today that some campers at Prado Regional Park in Chino got into a boozed up argument over loud music or something and then started popping rounds. Some reports say they shot at each other. Others say they shot into the air. The shooters on both sides of the argument turned out to be off-duty LA County Sheriff's Deputies.

If this story is true - and at this point, there's no reason to believe it isn't - these two assbites should be immediately fired and stripped of all pension and health benefits. There's absolutely no excuse for a cop to fire his weapon under those circumstances. Firing into the air? Idiotic and goes against the policies of every department in the country. Firing at a target you can' identify when there's no immediate deadly threat to innocent life? Ditto.

This is outrageous and if it were a couple of civilians engaged in this event, they'd be in jail right now. These two cops should be there instead of paid leave. Cops should not be allowed to act like thugs and they aren't given any extra-judicial power to act like asses and get away with it.

One more thing. Baca should resign immediately. He clearly does not have his head in the game and he's letting thugs with badges into a department that should know better run around in a county that deserves better. From elected officials more preoccupied with their private parts, pensions and back room deals to thug cops acting like they ARE the law, the citizens of this County, State and Country are not being well served at all. Time to clean house.

POMONA: CLASH OF THE GANGS

If you've been keeping your ear to the ground, you've no doubt heard that the murder rate in Pomona is heading upward. The LA Times and other local papers have covered this but none have so far gotten close to what's happening.

Be advised that this comes from two separate sources and not something I pulled out of my bag of speculation. When I speculate, I let you know that.

From someone who just came out of the system, the story seems to be that Crips and Bloods have come  to some sort of understand when they're out playing in Pomona. They've put aside their ancient animosity and presenting a united front to the one entity they both agree is the real enemy -- the Surenos. Red and Blue has apparently been replaced by Orange - the new indicator of some kind of unity. Like we said, this comes from a reliable source and while it may sound far fetched, there may be more than a little truth to it.

Another sources seems to have validated this contention and further elaborated that the Black IE is also putting out a welcome mat for Crips and Blood factions that operate in the IE. The point of the alliance is not wasting time fighting each other when they're both battling Surenos.

What to make of this?

If true and if the alliance holds, we're going to see some major violence erupting in Pomona and elsewhere. If it's not true, then we're back to the old paradigm and the status quo remains.

More on this if it develops.

LAST OF THE ARELLANO FELIX SENTENCED

You might have read that Eduardo Arellano Felix was just sentenced to 15 years in the Feds for his role as money launderer for the AFO. A full on medical doctor, he was responsible for administering the finances of the AFO. So what's next?

If history is any indication of the future, he'll land in Florence or Sandstone and join the other DTO operators, Jihadi terrorists, Mafia bosses and, of course, the Big Homies. And then the fun starts.

Having interviewed people who have been in those places, an awful lot of friendships are formed in these Federal prisons between people who might not have ever met on the outside. Information is exchanged. War stories are told. They start playing the usual game of "Hey do you know (insert criminal name here?"

Eventually, inevitably and with a high degree of probability, policy decisions are floated, ideas are sent up the flagpole to see who'll salute and the seeds for the evolution of criminal enterprises are planted.

What could possibly go wrong?

TO THE FAITHFUL

Yeah, you can say we're back on the air after a long absence. Back channel queries have asked what the hell we've been up to. Simple. Working on the next book. And a documentary. And a film project. And a few other things that frankly have made us personae non grata among law enforcement, local and state prosecutors and numerous politicians. Apparently, the mainstream media doesn't ask the sort of questions this blog asks. The do-nothing, say-nothing press gets access. We get shown the door.

Since last posting regularly, it's become more and more apparent that the mainstream press is nothing more than a lap dog and enabler of powerful financial, political and social entities whose goals seem to be to keep citizens uninformed and pliable. The less you know, the less likely you are to get thoroughly pissed off.

You'll notice a long post on Medical Marijuana. We're currently working on a project that is trying to get to the heart of some uncomfortable realities about the Med Pot phenomenon. Can't say anything definitive until it's all done, but it appears that Med Pot laws and regulations have holes in them big enough to drive 18-wheelers full of pot through.

Our intellectual superiors in politics and law enforcement have created a chaotic situation that simultaneously slams "legitimate" low level users into jail and lets millionaire pot shop owners and growers slide through like snakes slicked up on STP. Laws seem to be enforced in a capricious and biased manner. Bad guys are allowed to be be bad until they are no longer useful. Then they get hammered with a huge indictment in a blatant grandstand play to make the good guys look like heroes.

More on this topic to come.

Thanks to all for the warm welcome back.

WE WARNED YOU.

Way back in old days (I think what would be 2009) this blog raised the issue that our home-grown prison gang (the Eme) was making deals and arrangements with Mexican Drug Cartels. This was based on some threads of evidence that we came across combined with common sense predictions.

It appears we were once again prescient and way ahead of the curve. It's not like we created Cold Fusion or anything but just indicates that if you ask the right questions based on current best knowledge can lead to some inevitable conclusions.

Last week, the Feds (ICE, DEA) and local coppers broke up a significant Florencia 13/La Familia operation. The usual shocked faces appeared on the news and the usual platitudes were uttered by law enforcement about what a great job they do and how this puts a big dent in the operations of a DTO and how much safer we all are etc. etc. etc.

These alliances are nothing new. Just bigger and better organized and with more players involved with more money to play with and bigger loads to deliver.

A quick review of history will reveal that as far back as the days when Joe Morgan was playing on the streets, the Eme always had a south-facing strategy that ebbed and flowed with who was on the streets and how good their connections were south of San Diego. Morgan was known to visit Mexico with a girlfriend in a motor home. In the days before dope sniffing dogs, X-ray machines and the rest of the electronic tools, Morgan would pack the empty spaces in the Mo Ho with dope and drive it back into the U.S. To the curious, Morgan and the girl looked like tourists. Sort of a precursor to the current "We're the Millers" movie.

Over time, the arrangements shifted. We had Bat Marquez and Popeye Barron worked with the Arellano Felix Organization. And there was a whole squad of Logan Heights gangsters working as enforcers directly for the AFO in Tijuana with the permission of the Big Homies.

And, of course, there was Chata Leon in Northeast running her narco organization more along the lines of a Cartel Op as opposed to the standard SOP of Surenos.

And now this Florencia/La Familia alliance. The shotcaller on this side of the border appears to be Arturo Tablas Castellanos. As the diligent student knows, Tablas hasn't been on the streets since 1979 but you can't keep an enterprising Homie from conducting his business merely by housing him in the SHU at the Bay.

According to what the press reported, something like $150K changed hands to allow La Familia operators to work with Florencia. Not a huge amount by Cartel standards but significant by Sureno standards. On the streets and the Bay, this is big cubic money. Enough to buy you an entire neighborhood. Or a hunger strike.

Tablas was involved in the much celebrated SHU hunger strike. The usual suspects in the press presented this as a prison rights and human rights issue. In fact, it was a street-control and lines of communications issue. Controlling a dope enterprise from the SHU is not impossible. But it is a pain. Housing in the mainline makes communication a lot easier and you can have real time information delivered and transmitted to keep the troops energized, informed and on top of their game.

We noticed that the day the Federal indictment was issued and named Tablas as an un-indicted co-conspirator, the hunger strike story completely disappeared from the news. Coincidence? We think not.

What was interesting was that Tablas got shot callers from the three other prison gangs to go along with the strike. You have to wonder if some of that $150 was used as a deposit to those other prison gangs to get them on board with the hunger strike. The deal being, that this down payment was only a taste of what was to come from the streets if they helped Tablas get out of the SHU. Pure speculation on our part, but this is something that came up in conversation here in the bunker as we drank coffee, discussed possible scenarios and fielded phone calls from active and retired individuals on both sides of the law.

The question for the curious to ponder is this: When the Eme initiates a merger or a working arrangement with a Cartel, what form does the resulting hybrid entity take?

The two entities have historically been different in style, operational tempo, operational methods, organizational structure and, significantly, the level of violence employed to further their goals. Does this signal a possible change in the Eme's horizontal organizational structure to emulate their Southern partners in crime? Or does the cartel operate in the more decentralized model of the Eme? Will the neighborhoods involved shift alliances over time from the Big Homies that came out of those neighborhoods or will they abandon the usual neighborhood loyalty and start waving the Cartel flag?

Just something to think about. Feel free to comment intelligently and, as always, the comments are moderated so no net banging.

BACK IN THE SADDLE. FOR NOW.

Hey all. Been a while.

This is a test. More to come.

WHADDAYA MEAN BY LEGAL?

In the last few months I've been pulling together information on the Cannabis issue. It's clear that attitudes have change since the Woodstockers and 60s hipsters starting using the weed for fun and to make various statements about personal freedom, government intrusion into private affairs and the possibility of a shortcut to the expansion of consciousness. A lot of arguments were pure crap. Regardless of the rationale for using Cannabis, the point for using it comes down to the simple rush of getting loaded.

Whether it's Purel, pot or pills, getting loaded is one of those proclivities we can't seem to resist. One side of the arguments goes like this - "If we can't resist it, let's legalize it and stop the law enforcement." The argument is boiled down to three words "Legalize and tax."

On the other side we have the "resist your base instincts" argument. This group wants to retain all the legal sanctions against all drugs except for the ones we already have - alcohol and tobacco. It's clear this isn't working. There's a powerful attraction in the psyche to altered states and no penalty except death will deter the determined. This seems to work fine in some Muslim countries and places like Singapore. But the question is, do we really want to live under that sort of tyranny?

Polls show that the overwhelming majority of Americans are in favor of some sort of legalization. Some go so far as to claim that we can pay off the national if we just tax Cannabis.

The legalization arguments seem to fragment its supporters over the question of how you define legal. What's legal to me, clearly isn't what's legal to a Mendocino County grower and what's legal to him is nowhere near how lawmakers would define it.

Let's start with the broadest possible definition of legal. Let's make Cannabis as legal as scented candles, carrots or coffee mugs. In that scenario any adult would be able to grown, use or distribute Cannabis. It would also be legal to import it from anywhere in the world. You could log on to the Arellano Felix website or the Hmong Collective site in the Far East and order as much as you want. Just like ordering bolts of cloth from India or fountain pens from China. The only taxes that might be collected here would be small import duties (if the government wants). Of course, if everyone's allowed to grow, I could also send my pal in Minnesota a few pounds that I grow in the yard when his plot is buried under six feet of snow. The government wouldn't get any tax at all from that.

If the Feds did want to impose a tax on casual sales, they'd need a tax collection and monitoring entity that would dwarf the combined size of the IRS, DEA, Commerce Dept. and so on. How many government employees would it take to monitor every back yard, hydro plot and farm yard in the country? Whatever taxes collected would be immediately sucked up by the bureaucracy necessary to monitor it.

Every "legalize and tax" advocate I've spoken to has yet to make that calculation. Taxation doesn't happen magically. It requires a bureaucracy. And a government bureaucracy requires huge amounts of cash to operate. Don't forget it needs things like free medical benefits for life, healthy retirement packages, unionization, collective bargaining, OSHA standards enforcement on the private sector they monitor, environmental impact studies and all the rest of the impedimenta to free enterprise. So collecting pot taxes isn't going to come cheap. It may not even pay enough to cover the overhead.

One faction that used to wave the "legalize" flag, the large illegal growers, aren't so sure they want legalization after all. They have made the calculation and they don't like the consequences. In any legalization scheme, the growers would be the first ones to come under scrutiny. They'd be the first to be visited by the EPA, Labor Department, Department of Agriculture, Farm subsidy bureaucrats, labor unions, OSHA, BLM, ATF, IRS and all the other government and non-government stakeholders. First Five will be out there with its hand out wanting a piece of the pot taxes - for the children - not to mention the second-hand-smoke people, the American Lung Association and all the health care people.

Frankly, the growers don't want any part of that. They've essentially dropped out of the "legalize" coalition and they're happy remaining in the shadow world between legal and illegal. It's more profitable there and there's no paperwork, accountants, tax lawyers or the U.S. Dept. of Cannabis breathing down their bong.

There are some that advocate treating Cannabis like liquor and tobacco. The argument is that if we can tax those two, we should be able to successfully tax cannabis. That depends. Unless we're talking moonshine, making decent liquor is a capital- and skill-intensive process. Unlike throwing some Alaskan Thunder seeds in the ground and letting nature take care of the rest, making Jim Beam, Bushmill's or Chevas Regal is beyond the capacity of the average individual. It's easy to tax liquor because it's hard to make and hard to hide. Growing pot is easy. Even a stoned kid could do it. Same for tobacco. But growing enough tobacco for your own use would require way more effort than it's worth. It's cheaper to make a run to the Quiki Mart.

Cannabis, on the other hand, requires virtually no capital and only a modest level of skill. Some argue that making "really good" weed requires careful cross-breeding, pollination, measured amounts of the correct nutrients and some basic understanding of biology. Frankly, the cat's out of the bag on that. What happened with nuclear weapons also happened with the "boutique" pot culture. It's called proliferation of technology. If a 7th Century dictatorship can build nukes, surely a 21st. community college grad can grasp the essentials of producing exotic pot. The boutique varieties are just as easy to being replicated by the home gardener as exotic roses or camellias.

The only reasonable way of truly gaining the full tax benefit from Cannabis is to strictly regulate and control the production, transportation, distribution and sales. This, however, goes contrary to the countercultural ideal of cannabis as nature's gift to Pink Floyd and Jerry Garcia fans. Regulation starts with deciding who can grow it, how you grow, where you grow it, how you transport it and so on down the line to where the chain of custody is monitored and accounted for at every step. That would also mean that growing for personal consumption would once again become illegal. There would be a permit application process, years of deliberation and lobbying, the inevitable backroom deals and the likelihood of bribes and corruption at worst. At best, the permits would go to the deepest pockets.

This approach has zero appeal to everyone except the government and huge corporations. The only entities currently in a position to create this level of production and control are Big Pharma and Big Tobacco. They're the only ones who have the capital and production/distribution infrastructure to ensure compliance with government mandates and tax collection controls. Every pack of Newport Lights and American Spirit sold in the U.S. has a tax stamp on the bottom of the cellophane wrapper. This is the sort of monitoring the government would demand of widespread Cannabis sales. Will the day come when the government will happily step in and make sure Joe Hemp's Humboldt Trip Weed Lights has a tax stamp?

The pot culture reacts to this scenario the same way Vegans react to cattle ranching. Pot isn't and shouldn't be about boosting the bottom line for Phillip Morris or Merck. And tax collecting isn't about ensuring that pot stays cheap and available. Whenever states or the Feds run out of money, the go-to tax targets are the sin taxes - liquor, tobacco and gambling. Nobody ever feels bad about taxing the evil enterprises. Cannabis will not be immune to this. Tax-wise, it will be lumped in with smokes and stupid juice.

Politicians don't want anything to do with administering the Cannabis industry. They don't want to be in the pot business in any way. But, based on the few pols willing to talk about this, they'd be happy to tax the hell out of pot. Just as long as it's not them that makes the final decision on legalization. No career politician wants to go down in history as the guy (or woman) who finally opened the pot floodgates. Even the current POTUS, a documented former user and most liberal president ever, has emphatically refused to legalize the Devil's Weed. Why? Because despite the glowing predictions of a crime-free future and all that alleged tax money, there's going to be a social, economic and medical downside. With pot so available, why are people who can easily get a medical card still doing Ecstasy, bath salts, crack, heroin, meth and toad juice? Because they want a specific high that's not available with the weed. Legalizing weed will probably keep the strictly weed user out of jail. But the reality, as any street cop will tell you, is that habitual users tend to be spectrum users. They ingest anything to get a buzz. And when they're caught for possession, they're carrying more than just pot.

Is there an anwer?

It depends on what you're trying to achieve. If you want a big tax influx to the government, the only course to achieve that is a large, intrusive bureaucracy, banning individual growing, licensing a handful of corporate super-growers and being happy with whatever price point and tax rate is imposed. Just like liquor and tobacco.

If you want total, unrestricted legalization, there will be no tax revenues. That scenario will predictably depress prices to rock bottom levels. Every offshore producer and in-country grower (small and large) will create an oversupply situation. That's good news for users and bad news for growers, cartels and smugglers. Let's call this the Jerry Garcia scenario. The suppliers with the deepest pockets will survive. The others will go out of business.

If we look into the future of the Garcia scenario, you can see the possibility of big corporations entering the market. It is legal, after all, and you can't prevent Merck or Genentech from getting into a legal business. And if you do, they'll hit you with a restraint of business suit that will probably stand up in court. They'll be in a position to package and market the hell out of their product. And the possibility exists that they may come to dominate the market. The home grower can still be self-sustaining but human nature being what it is, especially the nature of chronic users, growing your own may lose its appeal.

Basically, this is a long roundabout way of getting people thinking about their definition of legal. Clearly every faction in this argument defines it differently. If we were all working from the same definition, maybe someone could craft a law we can all live with without having our pockets picked either by smugglers, mega corporations or the government.