Keeping Drugs Off
The Street? Impossible
When thinking about the topic of drug prohibition the first thing
that springs to mind is the sheer impossibility of the task. No
matter how inventive law enforcement become in detecting smugglers or
growers or drug lab's only a fraction of what is either produced or
brought into the country is actually seized. Drug's aren't terribly
difficult to find on the streets. The only measure that could stand a
chance of keeping so-called illegal drugs out of the market would be
to lock down the entire country with a massive police state but I
still don't feel that that would work either. Why not? Well let's
think of prisons, supposedly the most locked down place in society.
Well guess what, the prisons are full of drugs! If they can't keep
them out of locked down buildings then what chance do they have of
taking them off the street completely? Absolutely none.
Vices and Crimes
One
has only to look at the great Lysander Spooner's 1875 work 'Vices Are
Not Crimes: A Vindication of Moral Liberty' to see what seems
obvious. That vices and crimes are two separate things. We have to
understand that for a crime to be committed we must have a victim.
For example if I walk down the street and decide to punch you in the
face for no reason then I have committed a crime, I have assaulted
you – you are the victim. Now, if I walk past you on the street
smoking a joint (which is considered a 'crime') then who is the
victim? There isn't one, however some disagree.
Some
people when thinking of the above scenario would say “Well there is
a victim. You yourself are the victim because you're damaging your
body.” Fair enough, although if we are to pursue that logic then we
must arrest anyone who drinks alcohol, smokes a cigarette, drinks a
soft drink or eats a cheese burger. This should not seem ludicrous
because it is using the exact same logic. If you accept that each
individual person owns their own body then if they're only hurting
themselves then it's none of your damn business.
You
might say that the victim of a drug user is their family. For a start
not all drug users are hopeless junkie's. But that aside we have to
pursue the same logic again, there are thousands of alcoholic's in
Britain, many people die of smoking related illnesses and even
certain morbidly obese people are a great burden on friends and
family. But we're not all clambering to outlaw any of these things.
The other argument I will mention here is that a small minority steal
from people to pay for their drugs, this argument I will tackle later
in the article.
What
I am getting at here is simply that we have to draw a line between
vices and crimes. A vice is something which may seem morally
repugnant to some such as using drugs or visiting a willing
prostitute but ultimately has no victim. Whereas a crime has a victim
who has been wronged by the act.
Crimes Caused By Prohibition
Organised Crime
We only have to look at the disaster of alcohol prohibition in the US
which lasted from 1920 to 1933 to see how gangsters like Al Capone
can profit from prohibition of various drugs. If drugs were legalized
tomorrow then every drug dealer, smuggler and cartel would go out of
business. When drugs are prohibited then organised gangs are able to
corner the market through violence and intimidation. Also one of the
ways prices of the drugs are pushed up is by the cost drug gangs pay
to bribe police and customs officials and as we shall see high prices
lead to genuine crime.
'Junkie'
Crime
I mentioned earlier that when I say that using drugs is a victimless
crime some will say that people are more likely to rob people to pay
for their drugs, so those people are the victims. Fair enough, but if
you read Professor Walter Block's 'Defending The Undefendable' you
start to see the picture a little differently. If drugs were legal
then the prices would be much lower than they are now. More people
would be producing them and they wouldn't have the overhead costs of
bribes and revenue lost through seized merchandise. It follows then
that there would be more drugs available which would drive down the
price so people would have less need to steal to feed their habit.
Another aspect to this is the fact that every time that drugs are
seized by the authorities then the supply is lower so (this is basic
economics) the price will go up. Now, when the price of drugs goes up
then drug addicts don't simply say “Well, darn it I guess I'll just
have to give up now.” That's not how it works, of course then
they're going to turn to crime to pay the inflated price. Granted
some people will commit crimes to pay for drugs anyway but I would
argue that a lot less people would feel the need to steal if drugs
were plentiful on the market.
Drug Safety
It is immensely upsetting to hear of young people dying from bad
drugs which have been cut with all sorts of chemicals and
god-knows-what. The reason this happens is because these drugs are
illegal. Producers are free to mix whatever they like with their
drugs so they can double the amount and the profit. If drugs were
legal though this would be a very different matter altogether. If I
ran a company that made ecstasy and people began to die from my
product then you can bet that not only would someone analyse my
tablets to find out what I had been cutting the tablets with but I
would go out of business very quickly not to mention the fact that
I'd be arrested (and maybe even lynched). In this way we can see that
if drugs were manufactured above board by reputable companies then
they would be immensely safer than they are now and we could avoid
many needless deaths.
Conclusion
I think it's clear to see that the case for drug legalization is a
strong one when looked at from this angle. We tolerate certain drugs
in society like alcohol, tobacco and let's not forget caffeine. But
somehow we think that they're okay but other drugs are somehow evil
and more dangerous. Marijuana remains illegal despite the fact that
no-one has ever died from using it whereas thousands die world-wide
from alcohol and tobacco related illnesses. We have to change our
perception of drugs entirely. If drugs were made legal society would
not collapse, we would be able to put many violent criminals out of
business and since people are going to use drugs anyway they would be
a lot safer.
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