[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.