[vectorpush]

> Please explain to me how two criminals who have some sort of dispute -- like say how to disburse the proceeds from a robbery -- have any recourse through the courts.

They don't, but that's their own fault. If your life of crime has forced you into such a predicament that murder-for-hire is a more viable option than dealing with the authorities, you only have yourself to blame. The reason that crime pays so well is because criminals take advantage of opportunities that the rest of society agrees to abstain from for the sake of maintaining order and mutual security; if you decide to exploit those opportunities for the sake of enriching yourself, you shouldn't expect society to feel any sympathy for the fact that you one day felt forced to employ violence in order to protect your criminal investments.

[msandford]

I hear you on most of that, and largely I agree.

But marijuana is now straight up legal with similar restrictions and regulations as alcohol in several states. And it seems like there's serious momentum to legalize in the rest of them.

I doubt we're going to see radical legalization where the drug war completely ends in the next 5-10 years but I wouldn't be surprised if it happened well within my lifetime.

"Life of crime" can have a highly temporal definition and thus introduce far, far more grey area than you're letting on by your very binary assertions.