U.S. drug policy creates criminals

The most profitable business in this country today is illegal drugs.

Those in the legitimate business community will probably object to having
drug entrepreneurs associated with them. But any human enterprise subject
to the laws of supply and demand is a business regardless of whether or
not it's against the law.

The reason why profits are so high in the drug business is because our
country's laws make it so.

Look at another situation. American automobile manufacturers make almost
all their profits on the sale of trucks. A prime reason for that is the 25
percent duty placed on truck imports. Government action in imposing that
import tax allows auto manufacturers to charge higher prices since the
duty raises the cost of foreign imports.

Government efforts to restrict the drug trade, primarily by seeking to stop
importation of cocaine, heroin and marijuana at the borders, also
interferes with supplies allowing suppliers to charge higher prices and
gain bigger profits.

Of course the druggies also have addiction going for them. As much as we
Texans love our pickup trucks, we don't normally become physically ill if
we can't get them.

Our demand also has an unfortunate side effect on other countries. It
encourages suppliers to corrupt the systems of those countries.

Mexico's president, Ernesto Zedillo, said last week the United States
should be paying damages to his country "for all the garbage they leave
with us" because of demand by Americans for illegal drugs which are either
produced or pass through Mexico.

Big money corrupts many

Zedillo has a point.

Sure Mexico, and Colombia which is the source of most cocaine have
always had problems with crime and corruption. Before cocaine became
popular, Columbia was best known in law enforcement circles for the gangs
of pickpockets trained there and exported to other countries to practice
their trade.

Yet the same high profits in the drug trade have also corrupted people in
the United States everyone from the local law enforcement officer to
bankers who help drug dealers hide their profits.

Nor can we expect any of this to change in the near future. That's because
we are unwilling to face up to what is needed to cut, if not eliminate, the
drug trade.

In the 1950s and '60s, the United States did some silly things because
leaders were afraid to be charged with being soft on communism. We often
see the same kind of behavior now except the feared charge is being soft
on drugs.

If the policy of stopping drugs at the border was working, we'd see drug
prices and profits even higher than they are today. However, the price of
illegal drugs has generally dropped taking inflation and purity of the
product into account over the long haul.

No solution is good

Can our present policy of interdiction work? Just as in the Vietnam War,
the solution, say those trying, is more men and more money. But given the
profits involved, it's doubtful that unless the United States wanted to
seal its borders and stop all legal imports that will ever work.

We could take the truly draconian step of introducing drugs into the
illegal distribution system containing a slow acting poison. That would
discourage recreational drug users and gradually kill off the addicts. But
of course we never would.

We could go after recreational users with a vengeance blanketing the
country with elaborate sting operations to catch buyers and imprison them.
That would discourage most recreational users and send the addicts away for
long sentences. But again, would the American public support sending the
nice Jones boy down the street to a long stretch for buying a baggie of
marijuana? And if they would, would they willingly pay the increased taxes
for all those added prison cells?

The other alternative is decriminalizing drugs. We could take the position
that people who want drugs can buy and sell them without being subject to
arrest. Profits in the drug business would plunge. The number of addicts
would no doubt increase. More of them would die. That would be offset by
fewer deaths among innocent bystanders when urban street gangs get into
shootouts over who gets to sell drugs on which corner.

That's not likely to happen either.

If I were in the illegal drug business I would be making generous campaign
contributions to politicians who vowed to continue the war on drugs. That
would be the best way to protect my profits.