The Case for Legalizing Drugs
Prohibition of drugs has not been effective at eradicating their use. As the global drug trade continues to thrive, developing countries pay most of the price. The cost to them not only includes law enforcement, but the violence and corruption associated with the drug trade, which undermines economic development and keeps millions in poverty. A better use of resources would be to treat drugs as a health problem, and legalize and regulate the use and sale of drugs. That would probably make richer countries better, or at least no worse, off, and improve the lot of developing countries.
The U.S. spends more than $40 billion each year on drug prohibition. But that is just the explicit cost. The implicit cost: increased violence, otherwise productive citizens in prison, and perpetual poverty, both at home and, especially, abroad. Countries mired by the violence and corruption associated with the drug trade might otherwise be viable trading partners, with the money spent on drug interdiction better spent on other means. According to the World Bank, at least three-fourths of expenditures on drugs in the U.S. goes toward apprehending and punishing dealers and users; treatment expenditures account for, at most, a mere one-sixth of the total. That’s in spite of evidence that treatment programs are more effective and economical than interdiction.
Right. The law manipulates the market producing an outcome outside of equilibrium.
Surely the minimal “gains” of the war on drufs do not warrant losses from increased law enforcement, violent unrest and the inefficiency created in the market.
Like all government intervention, the pain is transitioned from one group to another. In this case some drug users are spared while millions of innocents suffer violence and economic loss.
It may make economic sense, but there were problems with the initial “Portugal” study and I’ve seen far too much damage from the harder drugs to even consider legalizing them.
Marijuana, yes.
Well, Marijuana would be a big step forward and some of the “harder” drugs could be looked into on a case-by-case basis. Alcohol is a pretty “hard” drug in my opinion with very powerful hallucinogens but yet it’s perfectly legal. Right now, let’s just take a look at how many thousands of people are dying each year directly out of the drug trafficking coming into this country — most of it due to those “harder” drugs, especially cocaine. There’s just no question that something is going very wrong with the system we have in place.
You’re correct, the cartel violence doesn’t affect me. But the violence perpetuated by those habitually addicted to hard drugs does. Significantly so.
So, yes, there are going to be losers in this. With or without legalization. Such is the nature of any triage decision.
Which is why I couched this as my mindset, and even alluded to the fact that it’s not the most efficient outcome. And I do take into consideration violence perpetuated in other countries. But to think that legalization will have a meaningful short-run impact in those countries is wrong, IMO.
Wrong reply in wrong place. Oh well.
There is no question that our system is sub-optimal. But I don’t believe that pure legalization of all hard drugs is an optimal system, either. More efficient? Sure. Optimal? Likely not, as you will shift the burdens to others (say, the healthcare workers that now have to deal with the effects of this usage).
Nobody is debating optimization here. There is nothing optimal about an addicted society, but society won’t stop it’s addiction problem. So the question then becomes how you mitigate the violence and pervasiveness of the drug. Banning it and fighting the cartels and gangs is simply not working. Of course completely legalizing it and not doing anything else is irresponsible as well, but we have to find some medium where we aren’t solely operating on the banning of these substances and everything else ensues. Something more pragmatic and realistic needs to be done.
The point about optimization is that shifting to a system of legalization of all drugs may not be better.
I was simply stating that a halfway solution would likely be best.
I never put anything in your mouth.
Definitely harder drugs can have serious consequences that we want to avoid as a society, but from a cost/benefit prospective I don’t think criminalizing hard drugs is worth it. Like I said in an earlier post, a lot of innocent people are being harmed by policies that are saving some potential drug users. There are some people who will do hard drugs, legal or not. There are others who may be enticed into them if they were legal, but I think most people would stay away even if they were legal. It’s hard to decide who gets harmed and who doesn’t, so I think we should leave it up to personal decision-making, not government intervention.
Cost-benefit analyses are willing to take into account a bit of inefficiency to allow for certain things being provided to certain groups (some base level of education, health care provided to the indigent), and avoiding other negative outcomes.
Beyond that, personal decision-making is warped by the addictive nature of drugs. It certainly distorts the normal choice that one would make. I would be willing for it to be kept illegal, but jail time changed to a sentence at mandatory treatment centers.
There has to be considerations beyond economic efficiency and a “big bad government” mentality, at times. I simply consider this one of those times, and this is one mindset I will not budge. Never have compromised on this, either.
I really don’t disagree with you all that much (despite taking a contrarian position). I just think that it is important to consider that there are other people being harmed by these policies. It appears to me that more damage is being done than good, but I’m open to the idea of being wrong on this.
Richard, I get where you’re coming from but unfortunately even your proposed flexibility regarding jail-time just seems not to be viable. It’s fine if you won’t “budge” but your personal opinion of the situation is not going to help the thousands of people being murdered and tortured every day due to the “drug on wars.” Cartels and gangs personally enjoy the fact that it is giving the power and reputation and actually helping them get more money. The drug problem has never been this bad and if we keep heading in the wrong direction, at one point we’ll be facing appalling levels of violence inside the U.S. But as long as it’s not, why care when it’s happening in developing countries? We tend to ignore these outcomes when it doesn’t directly affect us in a dramatic way.
*war on drugs
drug on wars. classic.
You’re correct, the cartel violence doesn’t affect me. But the violence perpetuated by those habitually addicted to hard drugs does. Significantly so.
So, yes, there are going to be losers in this. With or without legalization. Such is the nature of any triage decision.
Which is why I couched this as my mindset, and even alluded to the fact that it’s not the most efficient outcome. And I do take into consideration violence perpetuated in other countries. But to think that legalization will have a meaningful short-run impact in those countries is wrong, IMO.
Making manufacture and trafficking as a felony while letting end users off with a wrist-slap is a recipe for organized crime.
Doing the opposite –punishing only users (perhaps with some allowance for addiction treatment)– would probably be no more (or less) effective at limiting drug consumption, but at least it wouldn’t feed gangs and drug cartels.
If society doesn’t have the will to put users in jail, then it has no business outlawing drugs in the first place. Users are, after, co-conspirators in trafficking. Cities have finally figured this out with regard to prostitution.
The United States has been fighting a War on Drugs for half a century or more. The struggle drags on with the U.S. neither winning or losing, depending on your viewpoint. Another phenomenon that has occurred over the past 50 years is the increasing globalization of consumer goods. Thus, it’s no wonder that drugs grown in foreign lands could find their ay here amongst all the other imported goods. Maybe a better way is to legalize it and regulate the drug trade. Tax recreational drugs just enough that it’s easier to grow /produce here rather than import.
If drugs became legal who would buy the prescribed opiates?
Big Pharma would never allow legalization.