Actually, I’m becoming somewhat skeptical about whether legalization would actually reduce violent crime. While very cheap crack or heroin might mollify an otherwise violent person (both by reducing the need to steal and by cooling his jets in a heroin coma), one always hears we should legalize and “tax” drugs. I’d bet drugs would gradually be as expensive as the untaxed variety today. Having said that, while I’m not thrilled with Uncle Sam getting richer, the shift of profits from drug lords and their minions to shareholders would be a huge societal benefit.

But what do I know? According to Mr. Markels, I’m evil, or at least deucedly annoying just like your average drug dealer, since I’m “an average lawyer”.

Kudos all. That’s the way I see it, anyways!

Which is why white-collar drug use is somewhat more tolerated.

I don’t think we’d be better off without alcohol. After all, Ben Franklin noted that alcohol was proof “that God loves us.” We would probably be better off without meth, but the drug war fuels the creation of things like meth. Once an entire class of drugs is made illegal, the distinctions between them fade. Marijuana legalization might make more people smoke pot, but it also may make them less likely to move to harder drugs, too.

I still strongly disagree with the premise that the drug war causes fewer social ills than alternatives. Between the unprecedented erosion of 4th Amendment liberties and the social destruction caused by the unregulated distribution and use of drugs, I don’t think any other option can scarcely compare. Gambling, prostitution, protection rackets, kidnapping…nothing can come close to the sheer size and reach of drugs. I just don’t see it.

First, I think libertarians do themselves and their argument a disservice by retreating into maudling sentimental appeals (viz., these people are just exercising their natural liberty and trying to earn a living) and, at the other extreme, by making deracinated abstract appeals to liberty (viz., this is state coercion against voluntary transactions and victimless crimes). A sociopath’s “human rights” are of little concern to most of us, because we know he’ll violate our property and liberty rights if given the chance. It’s not like drug dealers’ love of liberty extends to the liberty of other drug dealers; he uses private violence against most of them, both to enforce debts but also to preserve a monopoly. Drug dealers mainly are both bad and unsympathetic, and thus the maudlin appeals to their plight and the abstract appeals to their human rights both do and should fall on deaf ears. It’s no use worrying about the human rights of someone who is a natural predator.

The best argument for drug decriminalization goes something along the lines of Conservatarian’s argument: other goods that had certain harmful health effects and addictive qualities created and strengthened criminal networks, created incentives for violence to preserve monopoly profits when they were prohibited, and today they create less social harm because they have been made legal. The criminals have been taken out of the equation.

Now we all know that alcohol, once illegal, is legal today. And it’s also true that much of the violence we today assoicate with criminal drug gangs was once associated with criminal alcohol gangs under prohibition. That said, if both were made legal, I doubt the criminal drug dealers would all become model citizens. Many of the prohibition rum-rummers moved into other enterprises . . . look at the mob movement into the garment trade and city contracts in the Northeast.

As in the case of hte mob, the drug gangs would persist and have to find other criminal activity to do. I propose that this other activity would be more socially harmful and also, in many cases, harder to detect than the current drug racket. The drug laws make it easier to sort out the habitual criminals (many of whom are also violent and antisocial) from the rest of us. It’s harder to prove rape, kidnapping, and murder than it is to prove the posession of large quantities of drugs. And other enterprises, unlike drugs, depend upon corruption and intimidation to a greater extent than the drug trade and are arguably more harmful than drug networks.

I also think the major premise that ending prohibition was all good is somewhat mistaken. Alcohol today causes a great many evils, from drunk driving deaths to the social problems that flow from alcoholism. These problems may not be as bad as the evils of prohibition, and they do not excuse individual abuses of alcohol for their culpability, but if alcohol were not around at all, it’s at least arguable that the entire society would be better off. (I don’t mean prohibited, just nonexistent.)

And since less alcohol would be consumed if it were illegal–simple economics, it would simply be more costly–then it’s just a question of weighting the social costs and benefits of prohibition to determine if it makes sense to prohibit it.

My point is that optimally there is some easy-to-detect crime that we want to channel criminals into that does relatively little damage to the rest of society’s institutions, is easy to detect, and thus by being made illegal allows us to sort out the dirtbags among us and lock them up for a long time, while also reducing what is undeniably a harmful, self-destructive activity.

PS As for the nice chap selling cigarettes and alcohol, that’s usually true . . . except for that schmuck at the Piggly Wiggly. ; )

Yes, some people have addiction problems. However, note that cigarettes are the most addictive of the drugs and alcohol is the only drug withdrawal from which can physically kill you. Heroine withdraw will not literally kill you, it instead drives some to commit suicide. Then you have the whole numbers issues. These drugs are used by and harm more people by a far far far larger amount than all the illegal drugs combined. The press misleads us all the time when they talk about how horrible the illegal drug problem is.

Crips and bloods are not a figment of your imagination, but their existence is not predicated upon drugs. With or without drugs, the Bloods and Crips will exist, just as terrorist leaders exist in Muslim nations. It is always easier to by association feel better about yourself by blaming outsiders than to accept personal responsibility for ones own plight. Thus gangs, whether they be crips and bloods, Nazis, skin heads, or Muslim terrorist will always exists and they will always pray on the weak.

Let’s just agree that the merits of the drug war shouldn’t rest on the character of the drug dealers, okay?

Anyway, just because there are some nice drug dealers and functional junkies doesn’t make the Crips and Bloods a figment of my imagination.

It may still arguably be more costly to have a drug war than not to have one. But I wish people would be a little more hard-headed about the character of the average dealer.