A: Yeah, a lot of the violence is related to the drug trade, so most of that should go away under legalization. We don't see violence being used to resolve disputes in legal industries, with rare, rare, rare exceptions. Of course some violence doesn't have anything to do with the drug trade, so I'm certainly not claiming violence would go away completely. But reasonable estimates suggest that maybe 25 to 50 percent of homicides, for example, have a pretty direct connection to attempts to resolve disputes in underground markets, especially the drug market. So you're talking about a substantial reduction in violence.

Q: America's people and politicians finally wised up and repealed alcohol prohibition. Do you think they'll do the same with drug prohibition?

A: I think they will, but I don't know how soon it's going to be.

Q: Do you see any bright spots? For, example President Obama has told the DEA to stop raiding medical marijuana facilities in California that are legal under state law.

A: There's some sort of schizophrenia in the Obama administration. They called off the marijuana raids in California, but at the same time they are talking about sending a lot more troops and resources to the Mexican border to try and close that border, which in my view is counter-productive. So it's unclear.

Q: When President Obama meets with Mexican President Calderone this month, what do you wish Obama would say to Calderone regarding this drug warfare on our border?

A: The ideal thing would be for him to say the U.S. has decided to legalize drugs, but I don't think that's going to happen. What Obama could say, which I think is possible and would be productive, is that Mexico should scale back its attempts to punish the cartels and break up the cartels and to stop the flow of drugs. The more it does to punish and break up the cartels, the more violence it generates.

If there is an underground market that is left alone, it doesn't seem to generate nearly as much violence and corruption as when you try to clamp down on it. We've seen this big escalation in violence along the border in the last two years at precisely the period over which Calderone has tried to escalate the war against the drug cartels. So we hope that maybe Obama can just say "De-escalate" and we'll get fewer of these bad side-effects.