It is silly to attribute these statistics to pot, or poor pot users doing something that many, myself included, think should be legal and controlled like tobacco or booze; or to attribute it to a grand conspiracy.

Simple possession seldom results in prison sentences without additional violations. The sellers, and habitual sellers of all drugs, not just pot, are with few exceptions professional criminals and a majority have other crimes on their record.

If there is a strong reason to decriminalize pot it is not to keep hoodlums out of jail, but to make it harder for them to make a living off it. Nevertheless if that were to happen I am convinced that the same group will still be in and out of prison (yes, those in now have largely been in before) and will still be doing the same thing, but with harder drugs, or other crimes like burglary to make up for the loss of business.

Until we have a system where a large sector of the population is essentially unemployable in anything else, this will always be with us.

Needless to say, the users, from entertainers to roofers who use the stuff are also to blame.