Marijuana legalization has already led to many benefits in the United States, ranging from increased tax revenues to decreasing usage by minors to lowering incarceration rates for non-violent marijuana offenders. But marijuana legalization is also putting a substantial dent into what the Department of Justice calls the “greatest organized crime threat to the United States,” the Mexican drug cartels. And that’s a good thing.

The continued dominance of multi-billion dollar Mexican drug cartels is linked to aggressive drug policies of the U.S. in the 1960s and '70s

This post is in partnership with theHistory News Network, the website that puts the news into historical perspective. The article below was originally published atHNN.

MEXICO CITY — Britain’s top two politicians try to avoid talking about drugs. It tends to embarrass them.

Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron is sometimes reminded he got caught smoking pot when he was a student at Eton — the country’s most elite private school — and was "gated" (grounded) for about a week. He now supports marijuana prohibition. 

Labour leader Ed Miliband says he was too “square” to take drugs, but has read a lot about them, also leading to a prohibitionist stance. Yet when it comes to debating the issue, he shows he maybe hasn’t read enough.

During one recent televised debate, a young voter confronts and apparently schools Miliband over cannabis issues.

Hey you, yes you, Smokey Joe over there with your dime bag or your “medical” marijuana card. Why don’t you put the vaporizer down and do something constructive like, oh, maybe go work for Privateer Holdings.

Privateer invests in legal marijuana companies, and it just raised $75 million for a total of $82 million. That’s a lot of cash for grass. Its clean-cut crew has invested in three firms so far: Tilray, which focuses on medical marijuana in Canada; Leafly, which helps users explore strains and find dispensaries; and Marley Natural, which will offer hemp-infused lotions.

The debate of whether or not to legalize marijuana in the U.S. is not just a national one, Latin American leaders are weighing in on it too.

That’s because U.S. marijuana consumption drives drug violence in their countries.  Armed Honduran military police escort us to the most dangerous neighborhood in San Pedro Sula, a city dubbed the “murder capital of the world.”

The gang comes in and charges every resident a war tax they call it, it’s simply extortion.  Painful choices for residents: Pay the phony tax, leave or face the wrath of the gangs.

Similar fears haunt communities in other Latin American countries also plagued by violent criminal gangs, whose power is connected to the drug trade.

The cartels are still smuggling harder drugs but advocates point out the success of legalization in cutting illegal trade

In the midst of this seething mountain capital, Mexico’s security ministry houses a bizarre museum — a collection of what the army seizes from drug traffickers. The Museo de Enervantes, often referred to as the Narco Museum, has drug samples themselves (including the rare black cocaine), diamond-studded guns, gold-coated cell phones, rocket-propelled grenades and medals that cartels award their most productive smugglers. It also shows off the narcos’ ingenuity for getting their drugs into the United States, including “trap cars” with secret compartments, catapults to hurl packages over the border fence and even false buttocks, to hide drugs in.

One of the rare bills that cruised through both chambers of the state Legislature this session would allow the state to grow hemp for research purposes. 

A panga boat stocked with nearly three tons of marijuana worth about $3 million was spotted in the Channel Islands, and three men on board -- all citizens of Mexico -- were arrested, authorities said Monday.

Alfonso Ramirez-Lopez, 40; Marco Montes-Lopez, 46; and Daniel Garcia-Sanchez, 32, are being held without bail on federal drug trafficking charges, according to U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles. 

The boat was spotted about 12:40 p.m. Saturday near San Miguel Island by an off-duty officer with the state’s Department of Fish and Wildlife, according to a sworn affidavit by a DEA agent obtained by The Times.

MEXICO CITY – The growing legalization of cannabis in the United States is forcing Mexico’s drug cartels to rethink their illicit business model, turning to opium poppy plantations and domestic pot consumption, experts say.

Americans have been legally allowed to light up joints in the U.S. capital since late last month, joining Washington state and Alaska, while Oregon will follow suit in July.

A total of 23 U.S. states have legalized the drug for medical use, and opinion polls show that a slim majority of Americans favor legalization.

The changes in the world’s biggest drug market appear to have prompted the criminal organizations producing narcotics in Mexico to switch strategies.

MEXICO CITY — Once upon a time, Mexican marijuana was the gold standard for U.S. pot smokers. But in the new world of legal markets and gourmet weed, aficionados here are looking to the United States and Europe for the good stuff.

Instead of Acapulco Gold, Mexican smokers want strains like Liberty Haze and Moby Dick — either importing high-potency boutique pot from the United States, or growing it here in secret gardens that use techniques perfected abroad.

It’s a small but growing market in a country where cannabis is largely illegal, unlike the U.S. states of Colorado and Washington that have legalized recreational use, and others where medical marijuana is available.