WHTT Illegal Drugs
American society takes the strange position of making consumption of recreational drugs illegal, despite the fact that using illegal drugs is an evil that a person does to himself. Individuals should have the freedom to do things that may be harmful to themselves, provided that they do not harm other people. Government should not have the power to infringe upon the freedom of people to do the things they want to do. If government considers some activities, such as use of illegal drugs, harmful to the person who wishes to pursue those activities, then the proper role for government is to educate the individual about the potential dangers which may be involved.
Control The Drug Problem By Eliminating Profit
America should have learned a very painful lesson from the Prohibition era. It was not possible then to eliminate the excesses of alcohol by making alcohol illegal. Neither is it possible now to eradicate the abuse of recreational drugs by making those drugs illegal. The problem with attempting to eliminate either alcohol or drugs by legislation is that both are things that many people want intensely enough to pay high prices to criminals willing to take risks to sell the drugs. Like alcohol, drugs are cheap to produce so high retail prices translate into big profits. The immense profit potential of illegal drugs provides an irresistible incentive which compels many people to take the risks required to produce, smuggle, and distribute the drugs. Perhaps even worse, the drive for higher profits transforms people from being just passive drug salesmen, into actively pushing drugs. By pushing an addiction onto young children and adults, the pushers expect to collect very high future profits.
Another problem related to drug quality must also be considered. Many of the currently illegal array of recreational drugs can be made relatively inexpensively in home laboratories by individuals. Those individuals are never accountable for the quality, purity, or safety of the illegal contraband they produce. Even the larger criminal enterprises which produce drugs in great quantities have little incentive to maintain any quality control over the drugs they make. Illegal drugs are simply dumped into the illegal distribution network with no identification of the source. The criminals who produce illegal drugs are concerned only about quickly putting their current inventory into the distribution channels, and receiving their high profit margins. If a batch of unidentified drugs was badly produced so that some users died or were seriously injured, the anonymous drug producers would have no liability to worry about, and no loss of the profits previously put into their pockets. Another severe problem for society occurs when a drug addict does not have enough money to purchase expensive addictive drugs and is compelled to steal to feed a drug habit.
The cause of all the above problems is the very high profits that criminals can make by producing, distributing, and pushing drugs. The high profit margin comes not from the demand side of the economic equation, but from restrictions in the supply side. By making the drug business illegal, government directly inflates the drug profit potential and that causes the problems of drug pushing, poor quality, and crime to pay for an expensive drug addiction. Instead of contributing to, and even causing much of, the drug problem, society should initiate a three step plan to minimize and control the drug problem:
(1) | Make drugs legal, but under carefully controlled conditions. Even dangerously addictive drugs, such as heroine, should be legally available from government authorized drug distribution centers. Since the drugs would be produced legally by easily identified sources, the quality, purity, and relative safety of the drugs could be insured. Furthermore, legal competition would cause the price of the drugs to drop dramatically. That immediate reduction in potential profit would eliminate drug smuggling far more effectively than could any army or navy. The low cost would make addictive drugs relatively more affordable by drug addicts, and that would translate into a sharp reduction in crime committed to pay for drugs. But perhaps the most important immediate effect would be the elimination of drug pushers by depletion of the profit motive. Without drug pushers to profit from spreading the drug addiction to prospective new customers, there will be an abrupt and immediate reduction in the spread of drug addiction. Without illegal drug pushers, children would be more effectively protected by continued strong legislation against any sale or gift of recreational drugs to minors. |
(2) | Require drug purchasers to complete a continuing education program which explains the health hazards of drug use, and offers assistance with breaking the drug habit. In the same way that driver's education classes are required for some traffic offenders to retain their driving license, drug purchasers would have to prove their attendance at, and tested understanding of, drug education. The cost of preparing the education programs would be paid out of taxes charged on the purchase of legal drugs. The education programs would actually be presented by the drug distribution centers with the presentation costs paid out of drug sale profits. Both the taxes and the profits would be originally paid by the purchasers of the drugs. In a very real sense, the drug users would pay for their own education about the hazards of drugs. |
(3) | Expand the law enforcement effort against the residual illegal drug trade. Most drug smuggling and distribution networks would self destruct as soon as drug sale profits were reduced by the legal sale of drugs. However, there would likely be a few individuals who would continue to try circumventing the system with smuggling and pushing drugs on unprotected people. The full resources of the military and the criminal justice system should be available to stop the illegal production and distribution of drugs. As needed, tax revenues from the legal sale of drugs could be allocated to the continuing war against drugs from illegal sources. Fortunately, the legalization of drugs will dramatically reduce the difficulty of enforcement of anti smuggling laws. The number of remaining drug criminals will quickly dwindle, and so too will the problems of apprehending the few remaining drug producers and smugglers be minimized. The sharp reduction in the potential profits from sale of drugs, combined with an escalation in the risk of apprehension, will encourage any intelligent person to get out of the illegal drug trade and do something more productive instead. The few stupid people who insist on trying to take small profits out of the declining illegal drug trade will be relatively easy to track down and put behind bars. |
The author does not use or encourage others to use any drugs unless required to treat a medical condition. However, neither the author nor anyone else, has the right to require another person to act in a proscribed way. People have a right to freedom. To be free, people must have the right to do whatever they want, even if potentially harmful to themselves, and limited only by the requirement to not harm anyone else.
Legalizing the business of recreational drugs, under carefully controlled conditions, will resolve most of the drug related problems now encountered by society. However, one cautionary note must be sounded. Legalized drugs should not be allowed to follow the same painful path taken by government sponsored lotteries. State controlled lotteries were initially intended to eliminate the abuses of the popular but illegal numbers racket. However, the government agencies were quickly seduced by the profit motive from the taxes which lotteries contributed. Now, almost all lottery commissions try to increase their tax profits by actively advertising how much money a person can win, and how many tickets can be bought in uncountable combinations. Those advertisements never highlight the cold truth that a person would have to be lucky to just get back half of the money invested in purchasing lottery tickets. The fact that a lottery is one of the worst investments a person can make is never communicated by a lottery commission. The deliberate omission of fact and reality from lottery advertising in a misguided attempt to raise tax revenues is the equivalent of false advertising with criminal intent.
The legal drug distribution network proposed above would also generate a significant tax resource. However, legal drug centers should be prohibited from getting into the business of advertising and promoting the sale of drugs to get more taxes or greater profits. Just as legalized lotteries were initially intended to only resolve social problems caused by the numbers racket, so too should legalized drugs be constrained to the elimination of the social disease caused by illegal drug producers and pushers. Legalized drugs should not be allowed to stumble down the dark road of promoting its products to increase profits or taxes.
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