Unfortunately legalizing MJ isn't a cure all for the problems that surround the drug trade. Decriminalization is the first step, along with new programs focused on redirecting low level drug offenders from prison to probation with rehabilitation. Legalization of MJ may well increase the amount of minors with access to the drug, much like alcohol, they can get it, and if it's is legal and more readily available 1+1=2. The Drug Cartels don't just disappear either, neither do the drug dealers on your corner, they shift to other illicit substances, and then to the sale of currently legal substances to children. The violence does not stop as a result of legalization.
The greatest thing I think we can do as a country is to decriminalize small amounts of MJ and to put in place rehabilitation that has been proven to work. Not only do we then actually help our citizens to be rid of drugs, but we save millions doing so by not incarcerating them, taking a gigantic pressure off of our correction's systems shoulders. Corrections is a huge section of our federal, and each state's budgets, alleviating strain there and saving millions to put towards our deficit is only logical.
The next problem you encounter with the prison's is the mandatory minimum sentencing that has become so popular in the last couple decades. Which has also resulted in an aging prison population. And a vicious cycle where we lock men up, in overcrowded prisons for much too long. While in overcrowded prisons the environment becomes more hostile, and dangerous, but also stale and stagnant. Prisoners are idle, doing nothing, so that when they are released re-entry is setting them up for failure.
I recently read about a study that deferred indicted low level offenders to a rehabilitation (mandatory) program if they fit the criteria instead of jail. The results were quite positive, I'll reference it when I find it again.
It is in Arizona, in 2001 by deferring people to treatment/probation the state saved 6 million dollars, and again in 2004 they saved 12 million. Consequently those who went through the treatment program "were significantly less likely to be re- arrested than those sentenced to jail or probation"
Here is the citation for the article, if you can't find it let me know as I accessed it through my university and have a .pdf copy. It's a great read for anyone interested in the path America should take with the "war on drugs" (which I'll say has been nothing more than a slogan).
Cutler, L. M. (2009). Arizona's Drug Sentencing Statute: Is Rehabilitation a Better Approach to the "War on Drugs"?. New England Journal On Criminal & Civil Confinement, 35(2), 397-420.
