In the presence of a black market producing toxic products, prohibition is a reasonable response. Advocating prohibition right now, at the same time that you advocate for legalization & regulation, are not incompatible with each other.
With legalization they've banned certain pesticides but allowed others. Neem oil and sulfur are very commonly used as part of an integrated pest management strategy in the licensed market. I can tell you I do not feel comfortable inhaling neem oil and personally think the quality of oil in 2017 was better in the black market than what is available today.
As for things like neem oil etc., perhaps the current regulations are insufficient, doesn't mean they should be done away with all together.
Also, regulation doesn't automatically stop market competition: If the market has corrected the use of pesticides in the past, there's no reason competitors couldn't do so again through market forces above & beyond what the regulations require. Heck, it happens all of the time. The FDA has minimum guidelines for meat grading, but there's plenty of competition on quality, e.g., Angus beef, that is far above the minimum grades required for human consumption.
Regulation sets a baseline minimum, not a maximum, and there's an endless number of items that compete on quality much higher than the baseline.
To be fair, it's not like regulation can cure those people either.
No, this is a black market that exists because of the government prohibiting the legal market.
And the black market does a shit job of correcting these problems because it lacks the transparency of the legal market. For instance, it's extremely difficult to determine the reputation of sellers who have to hide their identity.
Let's also keep in mind government intervention can be actively dangerous if they think they're protecting people from themselves. Back during prohibition, for instance, they poisoned 10,000 people[1] to try and scare them into not drinking.
> Sure, the market may correct, but the damage done before that isn't fixed.
No one can see into the future. We didn't know the war on drugs would cause all the problems it did. We saw a serious problem getting worse and identified the behavior that seemed to be causing problems and then made those actions illegal.
And we already have the government involved in markets when it decides civil cases. The best case for regulation is when you have people suing each other for damages and the government, which has to rule on these cases anyway, passes a law that simply enforces the outcome of many similar judgements.
[1]: https://vinepair.com/articles/government-prohibition-poison-...
We already tell people "don't do it." That's a failed policy that's producing hundreds of sick people. We need to make harm reduction via regulation the default case.
Yes, it seems we basically agree. Which means we're just arguing over my initially poor choice of words. Sorry!
How do you figure? Prohibition will drive UP black market usage. Why would you do that?
If you prohibit X, the demand will still be there so a blackmarket will pop up to supply X to meet the demand. However, if the market comes to find that the black market supply of X includes toxins, then the demand would fall.
The problem here is the market is irrational and people will continue knowingly buying toxic X from the black market.