Hacker News Reader

Comment by Qz | Hacker News Reader

First, legitimate competition from suppliers would drive down costs, forcing high risk/high reward illegal operations from other countries out of the market. How can a Mexican drug cartel compete against grand-ma and her backyard?

Secondly, what is the violent side of drug activitey? Again my understanding is that it's mostly revolved around protecting/hiding illegal production, and moving the drugs to a dealer. If you eliminate that supply chain, that vector of violent activity would be cut off.

You've got this all mixed up. The violence is the competition. Drug violence is rarely about cartels vs cops -- more often it's cartels vs cartels and dealers vs dealers.

View on HN

Well, that's perhaps true but the broader point still stands. Legalised drugs companies don't tend to have the same violent tendencies. Glaxo-Smithkline don't tend to have violent gun battles with Bayer over who gets to supply prescription meds to a 'hood.

Also, although that may be the violence most prominent in the US, there's plenty of police/army vs. drug cartel violent crime in other countries.

edit: typo.

I don't disagree that legalization would reduce violence. Part of it probably comes from the fact that since what they're doing (on a large scale) is massively illegal, so using violence to compete isn't much of a leap.

A huge part of it is by sheer nature of the black market, traditional dispute resolution is out of the question.

You can't go to a lawyer and say, "This dude backed out on his deal, cheating me out of $10,000 of grass."

So the only method left for many grey/black market areas is physical retaliation.

Outlaw a market, and only outlaws (and their own twisted senses of justice and retribution) will thrive in the market.

Cigarettes are legal, yet there are still criminal gangs making their living out of smuggling and selling cigarettes. Unless drugs are sold without restriction and without tax there will still be a market for illegal drugs. Sure the market will be smaller and less profitable, but that might just make the gangs more violent in defending their turf as they need a larger market share to keep their current profit levels.

> Drug violence is rarely about cartels vs cops -- more often it's cartels vs cartels and dealers vs dealers.

Precisely the point: If the cartels come to intimidate grandma, she calls the police, because her operation is legal and the intimidation is not. The police, because her operation is legal, then go after the cartel and shut them down.

Additionally, contract laws and theft/burglary laws and so on work in grandma's favor, because the legal system is at least potentially on the side of her legal operation. This alone greatly reduces the need for violence.

The police...then go after the cartel and shut them down.

Hah, if it were that easy we wouldn't still be in this 'War on Drugs'.

No, the critical difference is that as things currently stand none of the people involved in the drug trade have any reason to cooperate with the authorities. And really, once alcohol was legalized look at how quickly the mob violence around it disappeared.

Right. Prohibition created the Mafia - before Prohibition they were a bunch of petty Italian thugs, but America's real desire for alcohol made them rich and powerful. Prohibition never works. You'd think a bunch of free marketeers like American conservatives would get that.

For another take on the how prohibitions don't solve anything, take a look at alcoholism in Native American reservations with an alcohol prohibition.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com