Alternatives to the War on Drugs From Gary Becker

Click here to read the article. Excerpts:

"The war on drugs makes it much more difficult for individuals who are unhappy about their addictions to cocaine or other drugs to end their addictions. When using drugs is a criminal offense, drug addicts who want to quit hesitate going to drug clinics, or seeking other help, because they are subject to arrest. Although decriminalizing drugs makes it easier to experiment with using drugs, it also encourages the development of for-profit and non-profit organizations that help individuals terminate their reliance on cocaine, heroin, and other addictive drugs. Since smoking and drinking are legal, the non-profit organization AA could develop to help heavy drinkers end their addiction, and profit-making companies had the incentive to create patches to help individuals stop smoking.

The evidence from Portugal, a country that decriminalized all drug use in 2001, offers some support for the claim that decriminalization of drug use will reduce addiction to drugs. A 2010 study in the British Journal of Criminology concluded that decriminalization in Portugal reduced imprisonment on drug-related charges, only slightly increased, if at all, drug experimentation among young persons, increased visits to clinics that help end drug addictions, and reduced deaths from drug overdoses."

"...full decriminalization on both sides of the drug market would lower drug prices, reduce the role of criminals in producing and selling drugs, improve many inner-city neighborhoods, encourage more minority students in the U.S. to finish high school, lessen the drug problems of Mexico and other countries involved in supplying drugs {to the U.S.}, greatly reduce the number of federal and state prisoners and the harmful effects on drug offenders of spending many years in jail, and save the financial resources of government.

In most countries, including the United States, smoking and drinking are rather heavily taxed through so-called “sin taxes”. For those concerned that legalizing drugs would greatly increase the use of drugs, legalization could be combined with a tax on drugs, like these other sin taxes. Some drug transactions might move underground to avoid paying this tax, but most production would remain legal because of the many contractual and other advantages of legally producing drugs."