"Who most benefits from keeping marijuana illegal? The greatest beneficiaries are the major criminal organizations in Mexico and elsewhere that earn billions of dollars annually from this illicit trade - and who would rapidly lose their competitive advantage if marijuana were a legal commodity"
About this Quote
The subtext is pointed: if your policy reliably manufactures billion-dollar margins for cartels, then the policy isn’t merely failing - it’s subsidizing violence. Soros doesn’t need to describe bloodshed; he implies it through the language of “major criminal organizations” and “competitive advantage,” a cold pairing that makes the human cost feel even more damning. By treating illegality as a moat that protects incumbents, he casts drug policy as an accidental antitrust program for organized crime.
Context matters. Soros has long backed drug-policy reform and public-health approaches; he’s also a lightning rod in political discourse. That makes this quote rhetorically shrewd: it sidesteps the caricature of permissiveness and instead appeals to a pragmatic, even hawkish intuition - you don’t beat an enemy by guaranteeing their revenue.
The punch is in “legal commodity.” He’s not romanticizing marijuana; he’s normalizing it, strategically. Once you accept the commodity frame, prohibition looks less like protection and more like self-inflicted economic sabotage that props up the very actors politicians claim to oppose.
Quote Details
| Topic | Justice |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Soros, George. (2026, January 17). Who most benefits from keeping marijuana illegal? The greatest beneficiaries are the major criminal organizations in Mexico and elsewhere that earn billions of dollars annually from this illicit trade - and who would rapidly lose their competitive advantage if marijuana were a legal commodity. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/who-most-benefits-from-keeping-marijuana-illegal-43592/
Chicago Style
Soros, George. "Who most benefits from keeping marijuana illegal? The greatest beneficiaries are the major criminal organizations in Mexico and elsewhere that earn billions of dollars annually from this illicit trade - and who would rapidly lose their competitive advantage if marijuana were a legal commodity." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/who-most-benefits-from-keeping-marijuana-illegal-43592/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Who most benefits from keeping marijuana illegal? The greatest beneficiaries are the major criminal organizations in Mexico and elsewhere that earn billions of dollars annually from this illicit trade - and who would rapidly lose their competitive advantage if marijuana were a legal commodity." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/who-most-benefits-from-keeping-marijuana-illegal-43592/. Accessed 21 Feb. 2026.





