The comparison with car thieves is not valid as no one willingly pays to have their car stolen, compare that with cannabis where a great many people willingly pay drug dealers to supply it to them.

So banning its *legal* sale not only doesn’t deter criminals from selling it, it *encourages* them to sell it.

In order to truly fight crime, it is necessary to address the root of the problem, which in most cases is need, rather than greed. Greater economic opportunities are needed to allow people to be able to lead decent lives. The abject poverty throughout so much of Mexico is what motivates so many people to turn to crime in the first place. The lure of big money is very hard to resist when one’s family members are hungry or need desperate medical treatment. However, if there are good paying jobs available that will provide the means for people to live well, they won’t need to engage in crime or earn money by supporting criminal enterprises in some way. Sure, there will still be some bad apples, but the will no longer be able to exploit the bad conditions in order to create criminal empires in the first place. Think of it as a harm-reduction policy for the local economy that will prevent the conditions that encourage crime to flourish in the first place.