Pure cocaine costs €1,300 ($1,700) a kilo in Putumayo, more than €4,000 at the Colombian border and, in nearby Jamaica, the price already approaches €6,000. The drug gets really expensive when it reaches Europe or the United States, where dealers make about €30,000 a kilo, depending on market conditions. The going rate in Germany is about €100 for a gram of impure cocaine, while a kilo of pure cocaine can cost up to €400,000.  After 40 years of a failed war on drugs, many politicians and experts are started to embrace this same conclusion - and calling for regulated legalisation. 

In June 2012 the Global Commission on Drugs presented a 20-page report, the first sentence of which read: "The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world." The Global Commission's report can be accessed at: http://globalcommissionondrugs.org/wp-content/themes/gcdp_v1/pdf/GCDP_HIV-AIDS_2012_REFERENCE.pdf

It has been calculated that the legalisation of marijuana could generate $8.7 billion in annual tax revenues in the United States. And money is an argument that can even sway conservative voters. The second major argument is the prison population. Some 750,000 people were arrested for marijuana offences in the United States in 2011, most of them merely for possession -- of a substance potentially less addictive than alcohol.  This interesting Der Spiegel Report can be accessed at: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/global-support-grows-for-legalizing-drugs-a-884750.html