Feb

25

Winning the War on Dru–,,,wait,, What?!?

February 25, 2009 | | Leave a Comment

So this morning I took a trip to the pharmacy and started thinking about drug legalization. I started wondering why our FDA and Federal Government allows us to consume certain substances that could be considered dangerous (ex: alcohol, ephedrine, Chinese toothpaste, etc.) But not others (ex: marijuana, opiates, cocaine, heroin, etc.)
See, I am of the school of thought that ALL drugs should be legalized, regulated, taxed, and sold. I just don’t see where the Federal or even State government has the power to tell me I can go out to a bar and get hammered, then come home and beat up my wife and kids, but I can not go score cheeba and come home to get high and read or watch a movie.
Its more than that though. Its the ideal of prohibition in any form that really gets to me as a Libertarian. I whole-heartedly believe that you should have the right to go out and do whatever the hell you want to as long as you don’t hurt or otherwise infringe on the rights of anyone else.

Take this into consideration. ( I only know these numbers because I did a persuasive speech in school on drug reform so no nasty comments if I’m off by a few million )
We have roughly three million or for those of you who need a visual aid: 3,000,000 people in prison at any given time, more or less. Out of those 3,000,000 prisoners, roughly one third, 1/3, or 1,000,000 are in prison for “drug related offenses”, sometimes referred to as “victimless crimes”. Now the daily cost to the taxpayer for housing and feeding all three million of these inmates is roughly $67.55 Per Day. You do the math because I suck at it, which is why I don’t do math, I write.
Anyway. You would think that the government would have learned its lesson back in the good old puritan days of alcohol prohibition, which basically was the catalyst for what we now know as organized crime.
My only point is really related to the free market that people are always on about. The demand for these “illicit” substances is so high that people will do almost anything to get it. Hence the supply. Ever wonder why it is so easy to find drugs? If your sitting in a room with more than two other people in it, one of them is high on something. If you’re reading my blog then its probably you.
Anytime there is such a demand for a product, any product, and the government tells you that you cant have it, be it oranges, macbooks, heroin, oxycodone, cocaine, etc. there will always be some American Hero (the ever present entrepreneur) who will be willing to take the risk to meet the demand with an adequate supply. It just creates a parallel free “black” market as they like to call them.
Prohibition didn’t work for alcohol and it certainly wont work for anything else.
Ill leave you with this quote from an article in the Wall Street Journal:

Prohibitionist policies based on eradication, interdiction and criminalization of consumption simply haven’t worked. Violence and the organized crime associated with the narcotics trade remain critical problems in our countries. Latin America remains the world’s largest exporter of cocaine and cannabis, and is fast becoming a major supplier of opium and heroin. Today, we are further than ever from the goal of eradicating drugs.

Over the last 30 years, Colombia implemented all conceivable measures to fight the drug trade in a massive effort where the benefits were not proportional to the resources invested. Despite the country’s achievements in lowering levels of violence and crime, the areas of illegal cultivation are again expanding. In Mexico — another epicenter of drug trafficking — narcotics-related violence has claimed more than 5,000 lives in the past year alone.
–Former President of Columbia, Mr Gaviria

Till Next Time
Alex


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