For a series of reasons, drugs are illegal. Some argue that they ought to be illegal because they are harmful (Isn’t everything harmful?) others are moralists who think that drugs are just plain wrong, and if they were legal it would deteriorate the moral fabric of society. By no means am I arguing that drugs are good. Most drugs are very very harmful and have permanent effects (Don’t do drugs.). But they should be legal.
So I say, Legalize them, legalize them all.
My argument has 2 sides. The first is a more economic one, the second, a moral case.
Whenever prohibition has been tried, it has utterly failed. Take the example of alcohol prohibition in the United States. Complete failure. Support of drug prohibition is based on a false premise that outbaning something will make it disappear. It turns out, it doesn’t. If we pass a law, it does not necessarily mean that this will become reality. For people to respect laws, they have to be respectable. In reality, this sort of policies have a series of unintended consequences that can be much worse than the problem they were supposed to tackle.
The reason that prohibition does not translate into inexistence of drugs is that whenever there is demand for something, there will be supply. Because supplying them becomes risky, drug providers can receive a “Risk-Premium” that makes it much more profitable for them to sell them. That’s the beauty of the market. As drugs are illegal, no other set of rules apply to the suppliers. This means that some constraints that allow private and public incentives to align (‘As by an invisible hand’) in non-black-markets are not available in the drug realm. This makes this underworld a free-for-all where all means are on the table. This is the reason why competition of drug organizations is often led with guns and murder. People who want to maintain drugs illegal because they wish to save lives do not take into account that much more deaths (Innocent ones, to a large extent) are caused by drug wars than they are by drug consumption.
As drugs are already illegal, no additional rules or regulations apply to them. So you cannot forbid the sale of drugs to kids and teenagers, unlike alcohol (At least in countries where the Rule of Law actually works). In the U.S it is way easier for a teenager to get pot (or any other drug for that matter) than it is to get cigarettes or alcohol. It is more common for an average american teenager to smoke pot than it is to drink alcohol on a regular basis. People who want drugs to remain illegal don’t realize that by keeping them illegal, kids and teenagers are more exposed to them. It is also impossible for the government to require minimum quality/health requirement for drugs. As it is hard for consumers to know the quality of drugs before buying them (And having no ways to retaliate if the quality is not what was expected to be), we can expect some drugs to be more harmful than they should have otherwise have been.
The cost of engaging in a war against drugs are huge. And it is an uphill battle. Both because supply and demand always try to meet and because while organizations that try to fight against drugs have borders, drug providers don’t. For all the money, time and effort that has been spent on the war on drugs, the results are painfully shameful. People still use drugs. People still sell drugs. But a lot of people get hurt in the process of trying to divorce supply and demand. Actively pursuing the prohibition of drugs is a sure money pit.
Drug prohibition is intended to ‘help’ people. But a harmless consumer of recreational drugs that is catched consuming may face serious legal consequences like imprisonment. How is this helping that person? Is it better for him to be in jail than it is to consume (often harmless) drugs? Who gets benefited from drug prohibition?. This in turn increases the jail population with innocent people, who after serving their time are more prone to become criminals, who then harm society even more. The time they (unnecessarily) spend in jail has to be paid by someone, increasing the costs to society even more.
Now the moral case.
There is no such thing as a victimless crime. If people are the owners of their own bodies and live’s, why should someone have the right to forbid them to ingest any substance they want? If people wished to be consequent with their logic, soda, cigarettes, alcohol, most foods and drinks should be banned. Almost all substances we consume are harmful to some extent. This is why we make daily trade-offs: “I know this bottle of Coca-cola is harmful for me, but I like it so much. Should I drink it?”. People have different preferences and this is why they make different decisions. Some like to exercise, eat healthy, and enjoy the extra years they earn in the process. Others would rather increase their risks of diseases and an early death to avoid the pains of living a healthy lifestyle (Who likes jogging anyways?) and enjoy the perks of earthly pleasures (Such as fast-food and partying). None of this decisions is inherently right or wrong. They just reflect differences in preferences, values and world views.
If someone does not do drugs, that’s fine. In fact, that’s great. It is highly encouraged, and they will probably reap off the benefits of longer life and all the ugly consequences of hard drugs. But that does not give them the right to say what someone else ought to do or not do!
The fact that something is legal does not mean people will go frenzy on consuming it. A lot of harmful stuff is legal, yet not everyone buys them.
I wanted to discuss the methodology of legalizing it, the possible regulations and so on. But I have already written enough. Besides I don’t think many people read the blog.
@Corderrosas
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