DID WE LEARN NOTHING FROM PROHIBITION ERA?

In response to Mary Anastasia O'Grady's April 28 Americas column
"Drugs Beget Thugs in the Americas":

As Ludwig von Mises explained (in 1927), government can't stop people
from enjoying themselves with psychic stimulants, it can only make
other bad things happen.

Consider the following unintended and undesirable consequences of
criminalizing drugs such as marijuana, cocaine and heroin:

1) The price of the illegal commodity is higher than it would be in a
legal, competitive, market.

High black-market prices encourage low-level crime. Unlike alcohol and
tobacco users, illegal drug users commit crimes to raise the funds to
buy their high-price drugs. 2) Peaceful drug users, by definition,
become criminals, ruining the lives of those prosecuted and thus
stigmatized. 3) High black-market drug profits attract the most
ruthless and violent criminals to the business.

Alcohol prohibition created organized crime. Today's drug prohibition
keeps it going. 4) The illegal drug market corrupts the criminal
justice system as cops, courts and prison guards find it hard to
resist getting in on the high returns. 5) Law enforcement becomes more
expensive for the taxpayer and is misdirected away from violent crime.
6) The products in illegal markets are of lower quality and more
likely to contain impurities than they would be if legal, thus
endangering consumers. No "truth in labeling" here. 7) Unnecessary
illness and death result.

Users spending money on high-priced drugs ignore their
health.

They share needles, spreading AIDS and other diseases.

Cancer and MS sufferers are deprived of pain-relieving marijuana. 8)
Competition in the illegal drug market is based on violence, not
peaceful competition under the rule of law. Thousands of murders every
year occur as a result. 9) The War on Drugs is a war on civil
liberties. Your property may be seized without trial on a mere
allegation that it was used in a drug deal. 10) The Drug War is racist.

Although minorities use drugs at about the same rate as whites, they
make up a greatly disproportionate percentage of those prosecuted and
convicted.

David Bergland

Kennewick, Wash.