LOS ANGELES — A new study concludes that Proposition 19, which would partly legalize marijuana in California, would do almost nothing to curtail violent Mexican drug organizations that ship the drug across the border, a finding that undermines one of the main arguments proponents have made.
The report, released Tuesday by the RAND Corp., the nonpartisan research institute in Santa Monica, Calif., estimates legalized marijuana could displace Mexican marijuana sold in California but says that accounts for just 2 percent to 4 percent of the revenues gangs get from drug exports.
The researchers said that if California’s legal pot were smuggled around the country, it could replace most Mexican marijuana sales, slicing more deeply into cartel revenues.
They say, however, that that scenario is highly unlikely. “We do not believe that the federal government will stand idly by if California were to capture the entire national market now held by Mexico-sourced marijuana,” they wrote in the report, called “Reducing Drug Trafficking Revenues and Violence in Mexico: Would Legalizing Marijuana in California Help?”
The researchers also say that Mexican drug gangs are likely to find other businesses, just as the mafia did to replace bootlegging. In the short term, they conclude, violence might even increase as gangs fight over smaller revenues.
