I would note that the only real result of alchohol prohibition in the US was to enrich organized crime.--RG
-------------------------------------------
How to stop the drug wars
A HUNDRED years ago a group of foreign diplomats gathered in Shanghai for the first-ever international effort to ban trade in a narcotic drug. On February 26th 1909 they agreed to set up the International Opium Commission—just a few decades after Britain had fought a war with China to assert its right to peddle the stuff. Many other bans of mood-altering drugs have followed. In 1998 the UN General Assembly committed member countries to achieving a “drug-free world” and to “eliminating or significantly reducing” the production of opium, cocaine and cannabis by 2008.
That is the kind of promise politicians love to make. It assuages the sense of moral panic that has been the handmaiden of prohibition for a century. It is intended to reassure the parents of teenagers across the world. Yet it is a hugely irresponsible promise, because it cannot be fulfilled.
Next week ministers from around the world gather in Vienna to set international drug policy for the next decade. Like first-world-war generals, many will claim that all that is needed is more of the same. In fact the war on drugs has been a disaster, creating failed states in the developing world even as addiction has flourished in the rich world. By any sensible measure, this 100-year struggle has been illiberal, murderous and pointless. That is why The Economist continues to believe that the least bad policy is to legalise drugs.
“Least bad” does not mean good. Legalisation, though clearly better for producer countries, would bring (different) risks to consumer countries. As we outline below, many vulnerable drug-takers would suffer. But in our view, more would gain.
The evidence of failure
Nowadays the UN Office on Drugs and Crime no longer talks about a drug-free world. Its boast is that the drug market has “stabilised”, meaning that more than 200m people, or almost 5% of the world’s adult population, still take illegal drugs—roughly the same proportion as a decade ago. (Like most purported drug facts, this one is just an educated guess: evidential rigour is another casualty of illegality.) The production of cocaine and opium is probably about the same as it was a decade ago; that of cannabis is higher. Consumption of cocaine has declined gradually in the United States from its peak in the early 1980s, but the path is uneven (it remains higher than in the mid-1990s), and it is rising in many places, including Europe.
This is not for want of effort. The United States alone spends some $40 billion each year on trying to eliminate the supply of drugs. It arrests 1.5m of its citizens each year for drug offences, locking up half a million of them; tougher drug laws are the main reason why one in five black American men spend some time behind bars. In the developing world blood is being shed at an astonishing rate. In Mexico more than 800 policemen and soldiers have been killed since December 2006 (and the annual overall death toll is running at over 6,000). This week yet another leader of a troubled drug-ridden country—Guinea Bissau—was assassinated.
Yet prohibition itself vitiates the efforts of the drug warriors. The price of an illegal substance is determined more by the cost of distribution than of production. Take cocaine: the mark-up between coca field and consumer is more than a hundredfold. Even if dumping weedkiller on the crops of peasant farmers quadruples the local price of coca leaves, this tends to have little impact on the street price, which is set mainly by the risk of getting cocaine into Europe or the United States.
Nowadays the drug warriors claim to seize close to half of all the cocaine that is produced. The street price in the United States does seem to have risen, and the purity seems to have fallen, over the past year. But it is not clear that drug demand drops when prices rise. On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence that the drug business quickly adapts to market disruption. At best, effective repression merely forces it to shift production sites. Thus opium has moved from Turkey and Thailand to Myanmar and southern Afghanistan, where it undermines the West’s efforts to defeat the Taliban.
Al Capone, but on a global scale
Indeed, far from reducing crime, prohibition has fostered gangsterism on a scale that the world has never seen before. According to the UN’s perhaps inflated estimate, the illegal drug industry is worth some $320 billion a year. In the West it makes criminals of otherwise law-abiding citizens (the current American president could easily have ended up in prison for his youthful experiments with “blow”). It also makes drugs more dangerous: addicts buy heavily adulterated cocaine and heroin; many use dirty needles to inject themselves, spreading HIV; the wretches who suc b to “crack” or “meth” are outside the law, with only their pushers to “treat” them. But it is countries in the emerging world that pay most of the price. Even a relatively developed democracy such as Mexico now finds itself in a life-or-death struggle against gangsters. American officials, including a former drug tsar, have publicly worried about having a “narco state” as their neighbour.
The failure of the drug war has led a few of its braver generals, especially from Europe and Latin America, to suggest shifting the focus from locking up people to public health and “harm reduction” (such as encouraging addicts to use clean needles). This approach would put more emphasis on public education and the treatment of addicts, and less on the harassment of peasants who grow coca and the punishment of consumers of “soft” drugs for personal use. That would be a step in the right direction. But it is unlikely to be adequately funded, and it does nothing to take organised crime out of the picture.
Legalisation would not only drive away the gangsters; it would transform drugs from a law-and-order problem into a public-health problem, which is how they ought to be treated. Governments would tax and regulate the drug trade, and use the funds raised (and the billions saved on law-enforcement) to educate the public about the risks of drug-taking and to treat addiction. The sale of drugs to minors should remain banned. Different drugs would command different levels of taxation and regulation. This system would be fiddly and imperfect, requiring constant monitoring and hard-to-measure trade-offs. Post-tax prices should be set at a level that would strike a balance between damping down use on the one hand, and discouraging a black market and the desperate acts of theft and pros ution to which addicts now resort to feed their habits.
Selling even this flawed system to people in producer countries, where organised crime is the central political issue, is fairly easy. The tough part comes in the consumer countries, where addiction is the main political battle. Plenty of American parents might accept that legalisation would be the right answer for the people of Latin America, Asia and Africa; they might even see its usefulness in the fight against terrorism. But their immediate fear would be for their own children.
That fear is based in large part on the presumption that more people would take drugs under a legal regime. That presumption may be wrong. There is no correlation between the harshness of drug laws and the incidence of drug-taking: citizens living under tough regimes (notably America but also Britain) take more drugs, not fewer. Embarrassed drug warriors blame this on alleged cultural differences, but even in fairly similar countries tough rules make little difference to the number of addicts: harsh Sweden and more liberal Norway have precisely the same addiction rates. Legalisation might reduce both supply (pushers by definition push) and demand (part of that dangerous thrill would go). Nobody knows for certain. But it is hard to argue that sales of any product that is made cheaper, safer and more widely available would fall. Any honest proponent of legalisation would be wise to assume that drug-taking as a whole would rise.
There are two main reasons for arguing that prohibition should be scrapped all the same. The first is one of liberal principle. Although some illegal drugs are extremely dangerous to some people, most are not especially harmful. (Tobacco is more addictive than virtually all of them.) Most consumers of illegal drugs, including cocaine and even heroin, take them only occasionally. They do so because they derive enjoyment from them (as they do from whisky or a Marlboro Light). It is not the state’s job to stop them from doing so.
What about addiction? That is partly covered by this first argument, as the harm involved is primarily visited upon the user. But addiction can also inflict misery on the families and especially the children of any addict, and involves wider social costs. That is why discouraging and treating addiction should be the priority for drug policy. Hence the second argument: legalisation offers the opportunity to deal with addiction properly.
By providing honest information about the health risks of different drugs, and pricing them accordingly, governments could steer consumers towards the least harmful ones. Prohibition has failed to prevent the proliferation of designer drugs, dreamed up in laboratories. Legalisation might encourage legitimate drug companies to try to improve the stuff that people take. The resources gained from tax and saved on repression would allow governments to guarantee treatment to addicts—a way of making legalisation more politically palatable. The success of developed countries in stopping people smoking tobacco, which is similarly subject to tax and regulation, provides grounds for hope.
A calculated gamble, or another century of failure?
This newspaper first argued for legalisation 20 years ago (see article). Reviewing the evidence again (see article), prohibition seems even more harmful, especially for the poor and weak of the world. Legalisation would not drive gangsters completely out of drugs; as with alcohol and cigarettes, there would be taxes to avoid and rules to subvert. Nor would it automatically cure failed states like Afghanistan. Our solution is a messy one; but a century of manifest failure argues for trying it.
, mexico, I've been making the argument that the federal government should get in the business of manufacturing, processing and selling marijuana. Could save America. In more ways than one.
A- ing-menLegalisation would not only drive away the gangsters; it would transform drugs from a law-and-order problem into a public-health problem, which is how they ought to be treated.
I would pretty much draw the line at hallucinogens. Dope and coke is fine as long as its legal consumption laws somewhat mirror that of alcohol of which I actually think they're way too lenient on. There should be some middle ground here. Especially dope.
That just makes too much sense.
Of course, I think tobacco, cotton and even paper producing lobbyists will always be pushing hard to keep weed illegal.
I also wonder how they would tax it.
Don't forget the alcohol companies, which are the number one contributor to the anti-marijuana lobby.
I could certainly see where alcohol sales would dip if dope were more accessible. I know I'd drink less.
Heh, we just need to get the Frito Lay company and whatever company makes those ooooh so yummy microwave burritos to counter that money.
M is for munchies.
Seriously though, we really should give this a fair consideration.
I do see it as a fair possibility.
are they really?
I guess I could see that in a sense, but people already smoke and drink at the same time......
all they would be doing is switching tobacky cigs to weed cigs while holding their drinks.
really?
for average Joe, I really can't see it.
Its a lot safer alternative to recreational drug use. For myself and quite a few of my friends smoking has a tendency to slow down the amount I consume at one sitting. Over time I'd imagine it would lead to less sales. I don't think it'd be a huge hit but surly 2-3%
They would just it up like everything else. You would end up paying twice as much for a bag of seeds and stems.
Well you could conceivably grow and not worry about getting popped for possession. However that's half the battle right there. No way the legalize something that anyone can grow.
Naa...they would still make growth/distribution illegal because they are gonna want to be able to tax it.
Well thats what I mean. I don't think they'll do it halfway. It would be too difficult to legalize the drug but make growing it illegal.
Anyone can grow a tobacco plant.
Anyone with yeast, and some kind of grain/starch/sugar can make alcohol.
But the risks/costs of taxation would still be less than having the government sieze the whole thing, so in the end such a scheme would end up putting money in the hands of legitimate businessmen.
Heh, I have to laugh at the thought of Cheech and Chong types being described as "legitimate businessmen" though.
Gawd, that would be a great side business for any bookkeeper though. I trade bookkeeping for a print shop for some business cards, bookkeeping for my computer buddy for some occasional help with computers...
How many stoners out there would need help with the money-making end...?
This legalizing pot thing sounds better all the time.
Getting the tobacco from plant to smokable product isn't as easy as drying out some bud.
Ask any homebrewer. Brewing your own beer is not only time consuming but it takes a concerted effort to produce consistent quality thats regularly drinkable. As far as alcohol goes moonshine doesn't exactly taste great.
Nothing to complex about the average dirt weed. Growing it is almost idiot proof.
Yeah, but who wants to smoke schwag? I'd rather pay for chronic than grow schwag for free.
Probably, but hypothetically if they didn't and actually produced quality product, I'd have no problem paying more for a government 1/8 than I would on the black market. What red blooded American wouldn't?They would just it up like everything else. You would end up paying twice as much for a bag of seeds and stems.
I would like anyone to attempt to out-logic this if they really were opposed to such legalization.Legalisation would not only drive away the gangsters; it would transform drugs from a law-and-order problem into a public-health problem, which is how they ought to be treated. Governments would tax and regulate the drug trade, and use the funds raised (and the billions saved on law-enforcement) to educate the public about the risks of drug-taking and to treat addiction. The sale of drugs to minors should remain banned. Different drugs would command different levels of taxation and regulation. This system would be fiddly and imperfect, requiring constant monitoring and hard-to-measure trade-offs. Post-tax prices should be set at a level that would strike a balance between damping down use on the one hand, and discouraging a black market and the desperate acts of theft and pros ution to which addicts now resort to feed their habits.
Crunch all you want. We'll make more!
Perhaps.
But I gaurantee you that any farmer worth his salt can grow it more cheaply than you can.
Simple micro-ecnomics and economies of scale dictate that.
Tomatos and potatos are legalized and can grow anywhere, but you don't see the average apartment dweller growing their own.
You may laugh, but if this ever comes to pass, I am going to sink some serious buckage into Frito Lay stock.
I've always thought that alcohol was far more dangerous than pot - at the very least they should both be legal or illegal.
I'd also like to point out that while The Economist has a stodgy name it has for the most part favored (favoured in Brit speak) the pragmatic solution over idiology in most areas of public policy.
About the first point:
Would you rather live next door to a group of 4 guys who sit on their porch and drink a 1/5th of whiskey every weekend, or who torch it up every weekend?
Alcohol makes you do waaaaay stupider things.
About the second point:
That is part of why I love them. Pragmatists all. I am all for what works.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
