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Comment by tjmc | Hacker News Reader

Or end the futile prohibition on drugs and tax them instead. Worked for alcohol.

For values of 'worked for alcohol' that include 'moved world's largest criminal organisation into non-alcohol-related activity without impacting its organisational capacity one jot'.

Exactly. Crime would adjust itself, or find a new market. Compromising by legalizing something which has a purpose in being illegal is detrimental to solving the problem.

Bullshit. As if criminals simply avoid other vice because it's less profitable, totally false. Dangerously false.

There are not open markets just floating around waiting for criminals to suddenly discover them.

I disagree. I believe there are plenty of avenues of criminal activity. Trouble is, most criminals aren't visionaries, and why would they have an incentive to fond other profitable crimes of they can practically earn money doing what they do now?

By that logic they will all suddenly take up investment banking.

Thing is, there is no real purpose for many/most controlled substances to be illegal, unless you choose from the following list:

* Excuse for government overstep of constitutional provisions * Money to the prison-industrial complex (i know, trite, but it's true) * One more step in the notion that you don't own your own body

And those aren't legitimate reasons, IMAO.

I agree with you on libertarian grounds that, in principle, a person should be free to ingest whatever he likes. However, looking at civilized society as a whole, I don't see making most controlled substances legal useful. With the exception of marijuana and a few anxiolytics (which I'd encourage to be legalized), I think they'd be counterproductive to the working order of a society. Society needs someone to clean the toilets, and do other labor intensive jobs. But if you have a legally accessible ticket to happiness through drugs, why go to work?

Aren't you just making the argument that legalizing drugs would increase wages?

Because they need to earn money to buy the drugs. By your logic anyone with a hobby wouldn't bother going to work because they also have a legally acceptable ticket to happiness.

Everything reaches an equilibrium. Taking away a high-profit/low-cost activity like drug trafficking will shift activity to something else, no doubt, but this alternate activity will likely be less profitable and support a smaller organization.

We're seeing this with Wall Street. Dodd-Frank is raising the costs of doing business, causing the industry to down size.

If the law causes more harm than the drug in the first place, the law needs to go.

Criminals are just people. They do what is most profitable for them given their circumstances. If you legalize drugs, most of the current drug criminals will get normal jobs at McDonalds or Wall Street or whatever.

People drink and take drugs because they enjoy it.

What illegal activity are you proposing people will seek if drugs are medicinalized/legalized? Saying "oh they'll just move on" is a bit hand-wavey.

Gun running, human trafficking, political corruption, extortion, kidnapping, straight up stealing shit, fencing, counterfeiting.

You know all those crimes that aren't substance based.

And depending on the terms of legalization, I'm sure drugs would always be a small part, whether that be black market to avoid taxes or prescription drugs.

We should probably legalize all those too. They'll go away.

This is hyperbolic, unreasonable and valueless.

Or it could just be tongue-in-cheek

I like the way you think! I had the same idea. What makes something a crime is that it is illegal. If we make everything legal then there isn't any crime! I know, I know, I'm a genius.

None of these things is as profitable as drugs. Tens of dollars per gram, of stuff that grows in the forest and requires but a little processing. There's nothing so profitable to move on to.

Are you suggesting that the lower profits mean a crime ring can't be organized around them? Because history would disagree with you.

Of course not. Just that a less profitable but still high-risk business is less attractive and likely to be pursued less vigorously and by fewer people. Which is the outcome we want. Zero tolerance is not eliminating crime, and it is extremely expensive.

Plus, most of the criminal activities organized crime goes into which aren't drugs have non-consenting victims -- like extortion, theft of vehicle cargoes, human smuggling (vs. domestic labor), etc. So it's easier for the law enforcement groups to ally with those victims against the organized crime groups.

No, what he (and I, I suppose) is suggesting is that without drugs criminal organizations lose their primary source of funding. They can move onto other, smaller pies, but ultimately it means a dramatic downsizing of organized crime and a consequent loss of influence.

Which isn't to say that they won't run guns and traffick humans, but right now the problem in Latin America is that these criminal organizations practically run the government they are so large. Depriving them of the drug pie, the tobacco pie, the alcohol pie... they will have nothing they can turn to that will allow them to maintain their present level of governmental corruption.

Market size.

Drugs are relatively easy to produce and smuggle and have a massive community demand. Nothing else comes close.

Added benefit: fewer drug-related prisoners being trained up as career criminals.

EDIT: also, "people" refers to "people in the community taking drugs", not the gangs.

More like what illegal activity will criminals try if drugs are made legal.

There are bars everywhere, cigarettes are everywhere so other than a little bootlegging of alcohol and cigs there isn't much profit in those things.

Whatever people want and whatever makes criminals money is what they will try.

The UK situation with cigarettes might be useful to look at.

Cigarettes are legal to buy for anyone over the age of 18 (was 16 until feb 2011). Average price per pack of 20 is between £5.50 and £7; most of that is (Over 80%) tax.

High local prices, easy access to cheap foreign cigs (France is a couple of hours away and hypermarkets exist to sell alcohol and cigs to English day-trippers) mean that very many (1 in 5) cigarettes (and half of all hand rolling tobacco) smoked in the UK are smuggled or counterfeit.

Worse, there's money to be made for criminal gangs smuggling counterfeit cigs.

Cannabis is easy to grow. I support legalisation. But I am worried by the fact that criminal gangs already grow and distribute cannabis in the UK (sometimes using forced trafficked labour); by the possible harm to mental health; and by the weird culture of binge drinking and underage drinking in UK and how that would transfer to drug use.

UK annual tax income: (http://www.the-tma.org.uk/tma-publications-research/facts-fi...)

Over 80% VAT and duties: (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/budget/8401996/Budget-201...)

Video report about blatant selling of smuggled cigs: (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-13101212)

Organised crime in Scotland and their involvement in smuggled tobacco (with 1 in 5 and half of all hand rolling tobacco claim: (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-12219726)

I was going to post something just like this, but mine went: "The only way to harm organizations of this size is to attack their funding source." In this case, that means, primarily, drugs.

That is an over-simplified solution to a complicated problem. Organized crime would change, not cease to exist. Countries where prostitution is legal still see organized abuses in the industry, like brothel owners not following regulations, etc. Moreover, marijuana has the highest likelihood of being legalized of any drug (still not likely) and yet, it is the lowest profit margin for organized crime. Cocaine, ecstasy, heroin, etc. are much more profitable, and legalizing these would be socially irresponsible, if fiscally lucrative.

Profit margins should be expected to be proportionate to illegality : Since the threat of punishment forces vibrant competition out of the market.

Similarly, one can track the effectiveness of the war on drugs by looking at the street prices of drugs over time. If the war was effective, prices would be rising. Unfortunately, basic economic theory shows that the war on drugs is a complete failure.

You seem to think drugs are the only things sold on the black market.

Right. And like I said, it might be a fiscal improvement to legalize drugs. You could earn money from it. But, and i mean this in all sincerity, do you want to live in a society where they're freely accessible?

It's entirely possible that you do already live in such a society

In Portugal society didn't go to hell when they decriminalized many drugs.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.ht...

Please realize that drugs are very accessible right now.

Why should they be illegal? Why should any government regulate what you can and cannot put in your body?

For the record, yes I would rather live in a society where drugs were freely accessible.

I absolutely would, I live in a society where guns are freely available.

What's the difference? We have to assume reasonable personal responsibility. What's the alternative?

If you live anywhere in North America, you're already living in a society where they're freely accessible, so in that respect prohibition has clearly failed.

I understand we've all been propagandized to believe that drug use is inherently evil, however it's a mistake to lose site of the fact that (at least in the US) the prison system is largely a subcontracted for-profit industry. An industry with a clearly vested interest in maintaining soaring drug-related conviction rates as well as mandatory minimum sentencing.

I, for one, would absolutely prefer to live in a society where drug dependency is treated like a disease and treated.

I agree that rehabilitation is more important that penalization for drug abuse, but towards the original point, drugs aren't accessible in the sense that they're not legal. You cannot get them as easily as you can a gallon of milk.

"you can't get them as easily as you can a gallon of milk."

I would have to say that's entirely dependent upon who you socialize with, the time of day, and to some extent your age. I can absolutely think of situations I've been in where scoring involved a lot less effort than acquiring a gallon of milk. See also: dorm life.

You're right, I cannot call the milkman to open up the store and let me buy some milk at 3am, or better yet get milk delivered to my door with less than a 30 minute lag time.

"Countries where prostitution is legal still see organized abuses in the industry, like brothel owners not following regulations, etc."

There are organized abuses in every industry, legal or not. We're not scrapping the insurance market because of the schemes that go on between doctors, lawyers & individuals looking to make a buck through phoney claims.

That is true, and while I used prostitution as an example, I personally don't see why it should be illegal. However heroin addiction is not the same as corporations and governments lobbying in cahoots. Drugs aren't really viable for an effective lifestyle - at least, not the ones organized crime profits the most on. Even prescription drugs like Vicodin were nearly pulled off the market because of how dangerous they are, even when used correctly and in moderation.

There are many dangerous things out there that are legal and for good reason; if you choose to ingest it you have that choice and in the end you are responsible for that. Are you also for prohibition on smoking because that gets in the way of a "viable effective lifestyle"?

> I used prostitution as an example, I personally don't see why it should be illegal. However heroin addiction is not the same as corporations and governments lobbying in cahoots. Drugs aren't really viable for an effective lifestyle - at least, not the ones organized crime profits the most on. Even prescription drugs like Vicodin were nearly pulled off the market because of how dangerous they are, even when used correctly and in moderation.

Who are you to dictate what constitutes an "effective lifestyle" for anyone but yourself?

I'm not being judgemental - do you know of any high functioning hard drug users? Marijuana and LSD, etc. aren't what I'm talking about. Alcohol does get in the way of functioning too, but people can still use it in moderation. A drug should be banned when the grand majority of people cannot use it in moderation. Those are the drugs I'm talking about. (Again, answering a slew of responses in one).

A former roommate of mine held down a full time job while he was a heavy user of heroin and occasional user of other substances. The only problem was when he ran out of money to buy more, not when he was on it with enough money to support the habit.

Outlier, sure, but your making a very large silly sweeping generalization and moral imposition on others.

http://amphetamines.com/paul-erdos.html

Generalization of "high functioning" musicians, artists, etc. Also not knowing the actual numbers of "hard" drug abusers in their respective fields. Generalization of cocaine and the finance industry, etc.

Once more, on Portugal, seeing hard drug use go down after a decade, not increasing. Do you think if heroin was legal you would dive straight into it?

Generalization / thought experiment; hard drug use would go down with proper (logical) drug education, where schedule 1 drugs are separated logically, not in a stupid sense of marijuana being on the same level of destruction as crack cocaine.

There are numerous substances and/or activities which are legally available whose addictive tendencies are comparable to controlled drugs. The combination of sugar, fat, and salt, for example, has been experimentally shown to be as addictive as cocaine (this is a central premise of the book The End of Overeating; its author, David Kessler, is a former commissioner of the FDA, and medical researcher).

While I don't condone drug use, I feel its criminalization has caused far more problems than it's resolved, and it certainly hasn't curtailed use. Criminalize the consequences (much as we do drunk driving), but decriminalize the use and commerce, tax the sales, provide ample treatment (possibly through the sales taxes), and eliminate an entire class of criminal enterprise.

> Cocaine, ecstasy, heroin, etc. are much more profitable, and legalizing these would be socially irresponsible, if fiscally lucrative.

Are you claiming that the benefits that we actually get from the current prohibitions are greater than the costs of those prohibitions?

If so, that's not obviously true. After all, I can get all of those things without too much effort, so what is huge benefit of making them illegal?

If not, what definition of "socially irresponsible" are you using?

It's not obviously false either - it's at least arguably true. When I said fiscally lucrative, I was admitting there may be a certain profit to legalizing these substances. However, it's socially irresponsible. I don't think a society will function as well with a government making clearly adverse narcotics freely available because people want them.

"clearly adverse narcotics"

How are they clearly adverse? Why was it not clear before the middle of the 20th century? Why is it not clear in other countries? Why was alcohol "clearly adverse" in the early 20th century in the US? What's the evidence that making drugs illegal has net benefits to society?

It is very, very expensive and unhealthy to lock up so many young people for drug offenses. Illegal drugs do a lot of harm, but so do alcohol, cigarettes and obesity. If narcotics were legal, we would sadly continue to lose good people to them. But the evidence from Portugal* suggests this would be not more than we already do. And we would lose far fewer people to prison, drug-related violence and the accidents and diseases due to the conditions associated with illegal drugs.

* http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.ht...

(edit: spelling and added link to article about Portugal's policy experiment)

Legalizing something harmful because there are other harmful things that are ALSO legal isn't sensible. It just means more things should be illegal.

And they are adverse because they are unhealthy for consumption. That a prison is unhealthy says more about the American prison system than the comparative health of narcotics.

There are a lot of responses I can't cover individually, so here is a thought experiment to extrapolate the restriction and legality issue further: why regulate anything? Why restrict anything? We can viably allow murder and rape to exist as well if gun laws have no regulation - every one is responsible for themselves, and forget the rest.

"Legalizing something harmful because there are other harmful things that are ALSO legal isn't sensible. It just means more things should be illegal."

So. Would you choose to restart Prohibition if it were up to you?

No, there are degrees to which something is harmful, and mechanics to how they're deadly. Alcohol usually kills in car accidents. Heroin does not require a car to kill, and there is no such thing as moderation with drugs like heroin and cocaine. People don't exactly stumble about after drinking fine wine usually.

(Edit)

To clarify, alcohol does not need vehicular accidents to kill, it does cause damage to the liver, but my basic point was that while there are substances that are legal which are harmful, such as nicotine and alcohol, these are far and away much less harmful than other illegal controlled substances which have more overdose potential.

"Alcohol usually kills in car accidents. Heroin does not require a car to kill"

You are entirely deluded.

Alchohol doesn't require a car to kill either. How many cases are there of spousal murder while intoxicated? Also, heroin generally kills when people try to rob others for money to get heroin, not when people are on heroin, because it is a strong depressant and people tend to just lounge around like with pot. If heroin were legal and cheap that problem goes away.

Alcohol is a very strong depressant too, and most of the heroin deaths aren't from people robbing houses that are empty while they are in withdrawal due to lack of money to buy heroin.

Heroin (and alcohol) also cause psychosis, which is probably the biggest cause for things such as spousal murder. Legalization is a weak argument when the only evidence is "It worked for Portugal!" or "If we take away the criminal organizations then everything will be well!". Instead of fighting the infinite number of criminals I'd rather we help the dudes who fucked up and now want to make their lives better.

"Instead of fighting the infinite number of criminals I'd rather we help the dudes who fucked up and now want to make their lives better."

You realize that is exactly what Portugal is doing, right?

Apparently not, but I also see lifetime use of heroin also nearly doubled due to legalization, and there is still question on what effects were caused by the legalization and what effects weren't.

> it does cause damage to the liver

And to most other parts of the body

In eastern Europe there are plenty of cases of alcohol overdose resulting in death. On the other hand, there are no credible reports of marijuana or LSD being the direct cause of death.

Sure, alcohol is far less harmful than some of the illegal controlled substances. Still, there are other illegal substances which are less harmful than alcohol. It's not like ethanol is the safest drug out there.

Alcohol usually kills in car accidents

According to CDC data from 2001-2005, an avg of 20 thousand people died from directly alcohol related diseases (with an additional 16 thousand of conditions linked to excessive drinking), compared to 14 thousand who died in motor-vehicle accidents.

"they are adverse because they are unhealthy for consumption"

Like rocks, thumbtacks, shampoo, too much aspirin, bacon-double-cheeseburgers and daytime TV. We do not ban everything that's unhealthy. The question is whether, on balance, the benefits of prohibition are greater than the costs. I think we agree on that, though we might disagree when we estimate the balance when it comes to narcotics. Unfortunately, statistics for both sides are limited. This scarcity of data makes the Portugese experience really valuable.

We can know the cost of imprisoning all these people though. The US has the highest imprisonment rate in the world: 738 per 100,000. The UK, which has similar societal attitudes to drugs, though very different judicial policies, has 148 per 100,000, which is still above the median globally. US taxpayers are spending too much money on food, lodging and security for drug offenders.

Imprisonment data:

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/law/research/icps/downloads/worl...

edit: in case you think the cultural differences with the UK make the comparison poor, Canada has 107 prisoners per 100,000 population. That's one seventh the rate of their neighbor.

So, correct me if I'm wrong, is your argument that it's better to choose the lesser of two evils? In other words, we should legalize drugs because they are obtainable anyway and we need to reduce the number of people in prison?

I wouldn't put it like that, but roughly yes. I think the current policies are probably doing more harm than good. We should try decriminalizing some drugs, and spend some of the money we save on enforcement on education and health services. This is a harm reduction strategy, which is how we handle alcohol now.

So, correct me if I'm wrong, is your argument that it's better to choose the lesser of two evils?

Is your argument that it's better to choose the greater of two evils?

Can't imagine ever comparing heroin to obesity or cigarettes

Which of these kills the most people and costs the most money to deal with?

Obviously the one that is more of a widespread issue. Obesity costs more money to deal with because there are infinitely more obese people in the world than there are who are addicted to heroin. Fast food is legalized which means criminal organizations aren't going to cash in with it, but it does mean more people are going to be eating it because it's easier to obtain.

Certain narcotics are very clearly adverse because they are extremely addictive with very very small amount of use. You argue against "clearly adverse narcotics", does that mean you think it is responsible to make all narcotics legal? Should people be able to get heroin as easily as they get cigarettes, never mind the kids who would easily be able to go get some dude to buy them a hit of heroin or meth.

One mistake run with heroin or meth can fuck your life up for good, no matter what kind of person you are. Proper education and good life styles are a much more effective defense against drugs then legalization.

> However, [legalizing hard drugs is] socially irresponsible.

You've said that - I'm asking how you're defining "socially irresponsible".

> I don't think a society will function as well with a government making clearly adverse narcotics freely available because people want them.

Not banning something is not the same as "govt making available".

More to the point, those drugs are freely available despite all the laws.

I'll ask again. What benefits do we actually get from the drug laws? If you mention availability, you get to show that the laws actually affect it because if they don't, that's not a benefit. Since they are freely available, that's a tough argument to make.

Then you get to explain why the benefits that we actually get are worth the very significant costs that we pay.

I note that beer distributors don't kill folks over territory.

All of those drugs are more dangerous when they are unregulated. Compare to the personal liberties/responsibilities of firearms please.

When doses are measured and regulated, safety restrictions are adhered, and users can receive help for their problems instead of incarceration, then legalization becomes socially responsible.

I would like to point out that usage of these dangerous drugs does not decrease with their legal status.

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