It is the motivation for a disproportionate percentage of income-generating crimes such as robbery, burglary, and theft committed by addicts looking for money to pay high drug prices. It is responsible for much of the corruption of police and other public officials in drug-plagued countries. This will surely spread to the United States if it is not stopped. Without the money provided by the drug trade, both the violence and the corruption will necessarily be greatly reduced. The way to remove the money is to make the trade legal so that it can be regulated.
Alcohol provides a useful guidepost.
The people this saved from the corner tavern did not offset the social harm that came with the rise of bootlegging and gangsterism - precisely what is happening today with respect to cocaine and marijuana. So we abandoned prohibition and turned to regulation. We have, for example, made it illegal for teens to drink and for anybody to drive a car while drunk. People still flout the law to do these things. Six times more teenagers die from alcohol than from all illegal drugs combined, Lautenberg says - all the more reason to mount a vigorous campaign to deter them from drinking.