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.

Soros frames marijuana prohibition as a policy that unintentionally subsidizes organized crime. By keeping cannabis illegal, the state creates a high-risk black market in which criminal groups can command monopoly-like profits and use violence to protect territory and supply chains. The quote argues that legalization would remove this “competitive advantage” by shifting production and distribution into regulated, taxable channels, thereby shrinking cartel revenue and, potentially, associated corruption and bloodshed. Implicitly, it also critiques drug-war logic: the primary winners are not public health or safety institutions but illicit enterprises that thrive on scarcity, enforcement pressure, and lack of legal dispute resolution.