LEGALIZATION MORE EFFECTIVE THAN WAR ON DRUGS

How are a hard-line conservative and a drug dealer the same? After
all, one wants to keep drugs illegal and the other...wants to keep
drugs illegal.

"What?" you say. "How can that be? Drug dealers want drugs to be
legal so they can run rampant, sell all the drugs they want and make millions."

Unfortunately, what sometimes seems like common sense turns out to be untrue.

To illustrate my point, here's a story. Say there's a small border
town with five dominant drug dealers. One day, the town decides to
crack down on these drug dealers because citizens feel they are
hurting the population of the town. The police catch three of the
five dealers. Does this mean that drug dealing dramatically drops?

Absolutely not. The cut in supply raises the price of drugs which
causes the other two to make even more money. The business becomes so
lucrative that more people want to sell drugs.

For years, the United States has been fighting the War on Drugs. In
terms of stopping the demand for drugs, they have failed horribly.
Apparently Americans don't want to put down the pipe or needle. To
curtail this, law enforcement goes after drug suppliers. Many people
are sympathetic to this. After all, why punish the junkie who is a
slave to the drug when you can get the guy who got him hooked?

Unfortunately, no amount of legislation can overturn the all-powerful
law of supply and demand. Prices are raised when suppliers leave the
market, whether voluntarily or by force. This reduces the amount on
drugs consumed, but causes a price increase that can be deadly.
Higher prices make drugs even more valuable and cause drug dealers to
take more drastic measures to sell their product. After all, what are
a few dead bodies in exchange for an easy million dollars?

Since drug dealing is already illegal, there is no incentive to abide
by law. Law enforcement has essentially become the protection for the
drug dealers who don't get caught.

Dealers who stay in the business create monopolies. Keeping drugs
illegal creates high initial costs to enter into the business. We see
this problem in the current bloodbath in Mexico. Cartels stay inside
certain territories protecting their profit. Would-be competitors who
try to enter are met with a quick bullet to the head. These
monopolies also grow to be pretty large and receive a lot of
firepower and support from the communities. This is all bad news for
law enforcement.

If you still agree that drugs should be illegal because more people
might become addicted, consider the implications your choice has on
the innocent people of inner cities and Mexican border towns who die
in the middle of a bloodbath. Economist Milton Friedman put it best
when he said, "I do not think it is moral to impose heavy costs on
other people to protect them from their own choices."