Legal Weed Did More to Stop Drug Smuggling Than Any Wall

Easing pot prohibition is doing what the failed war on drugs never could.
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Why should Congress cough up the money to build a border wall? One of President Trump's claims is that it would help stop the flow of deadly drugs coming in from Mexico.

In terms of sheer weight, marijuana has historically been Mexico's leading illicit drug export to the U.S. But over the last few years, shipments of weed have declined by more than 75 percent. This trend has nothing to do with increased border security, or a crackdown on the Sinaloa Cartel and its former leader, Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán, who was found guilty on 10 criminal counts in U.S. federal court last week. Rather, the falloff in pot smuggling is a direct result of state-level legalization here in the U.S.

Reason's Katherine Mangu-Ward sat down with David Bier, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute, to discuss his cover story from our April issue about how easing pot prohibition is doing what the failed war on drugs never could.

Produced by Alexis Garcia. Camera by Austin Bragg and Todd Krainin.

Photo credits: Edgard Garrido/REUTERS/Newscom, Tomas Bravo/REUTERS/Newscom, Gary Moon/ZUMA Press/Newscom.

Lightless Dawn by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
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