Nothing Fails Like Prohibition

By David R Henderson. Excerpts:

"First, is killing people carrying the drugs, rather than arresting them, justified? Second, should those drugs be illegal or should we instead allow a free market in drugs with restrictions on purchases by minors?"

"My answer is that the drugs should be legal for adults. If my answer is correct, then I have also answered the first question. If drugs should be legal, then there is no justification for killing people who transport them."

"The main principle is freedom. Because we own our bodies, we should be free to ingest whatever we wish, even if it can be harmful. But the drug war doesn’t destroy just our freedom to consume what we want. Fighting the drug war has led the government to restrict many of our other freedoms.

The pragmatic reason for legalizing drugs is that criminalizing the industry has caused many harms. Our experience with prohibition of alcohol for thirteen years has a lot to teach us, if only we’re willing to learn. Prohibition worked in the narrow sense of reducing consumption of alcohol but caused horrible side effects. It shifted alcohol production and distribution away from law-abiding citizens to hardened criminals; it reduced respect for the law; and it caused many deaths. Drug prohibition does the same. If drugs were legalized, they would be sold by law-abiding people who have an incentive to care about quality. Organized crime would exit the industry. And the deaths from gang wars, which often include deaths of completely innocent people, would end. Would legalization be problem-free? No. But the problems would tend to be for those who use drugs, not for those who are innocent victims."

"before the Harrison Narcotic Tax Act of 1914, marijuana, cocaine, and heroin were all legal. Some of these drugs were widely used. Yet there was no drug epidemic with these drugs. Second, most people favor allowing activities that are much riskier than the consumption of drugs. Google “the fatality rate in climbing K2” and you’ll learn that historically, fatalities have been about 23 to 25 percent of successful climbs of that peak. Yet the vast majority of people seem to accept that climbers have a right to take this risk."