/It's naive to believe that legalizing drugs will damage drug lords./
This is the most ridiculous thing I've heard in weeks on the internet, and believe me, that counts for something.
How can they flood the market with cheaper substances? There is little reason a kilo of cocaine should cost much more than a kilo of coffee (ok maybe 5 times more than that because of lower yield per square cultivated meter). Still, the profit in the drug trade comes directly from it being illegal - i.e. the premium that users pay is a risk premium for the producers, traffickers, whole-sellers and retailers. Making production legal would not only make the product much much much safer but it would also reduce profit margins by so much that the people currently employed in this economic sector would be pushed out of the business by regular pharma / foodstuffs companies almost overnight. Along with it, the corruption, assassination and many of the other externalities would disappear, at the same speed.
Criminal gangs make good money selling tobacco and alcohol, which are legal basically everywhere. Sure not as much as illegal drugs, but still good money. Claiming legalization will destroy the illegal drug trade is just as naive as believing legalization will have no effect.
... well yes because of the market distortion that the taxes on them produce. The only reason people smuggle them are to evade taxes. If you're going to legalize and then tax it so high that it will still cost the same as before the legalization, of course the negative side effects will continue to exist.
Do you honestly believe that the government would legalize drugs and then not use the opportunity to increase their budget by heavily taxing them? In fact one of the main argument I keep hearing for legalization is that it will bring in all kinds of tax revenue.
Of course it will be taxed, and probably at a higher rate than other products. The trick is to tax it at such a level that fraud (smuggling) is contained within acceptable bounds. For example, normal VAT here in the Netherlands (only country I know the rates of by heart, I have no reason to believe that it's significantly different in the rest of Western Europe) is 19% ; cigarettes are taxed at close to 300 % (VAT + excise). Yet still smuggling cigarettes is a relatively small problem, which indicates that this level can be borne by the market.
Note that I support nor advocate 'sin' or 'health' taxes, be it for moral or utilitarian reasons, I'm simply saying that even at 300% the amount of people that turn to the black market is fairly small. But even when taxing them at normal rates (VAT only) they would already bring in money - everything is better than the 0 they bring in now, or negative if you take into account the costs that arise from situations that exist only because drugs are illegal.
Seeing the sales of cigarettes on reservation that do not honor state taxes and the number of customers buying, I would say paragraph one is not completely true. Smuggling is happening, it is just from a legal source.
I don't understand - yes there is smuggling, but on a small as I indicated. In Western Europe (the area I restricted myself to in my post) most of the fraudulent import comes from Eastern Europe and Russia, so yes they are bought legally there and then imported. Likewise, a fair number of people drive to Luxembourg where the tax rates are lower.
I take it that you mean that (Native American or Aboriginal?) reservations have autonomy when it comes to taxation and that they leverage that to attract tobacco customers from outside the reservation. Which makes sense, but I'm hard pressed to believe that it's a significant amount of total consumption. My back-of-the-envelope calculations (based on estimates of the World Bank and 40% of the EU population smoking 10 cigarettes a day) say that in the EU on less than 10% of all cigarettes smoked, no taxes have been paid. Which is not that much.
Of course if you have numbers that show that in the case you indicate the percentages are different I'd be interested to learn.
Err... They would simply use their billions to go legit? No damage, just making their business legal.
If I may, let's say there's no more illegal activity related to drug. Would that solve violence? Not really, life of crime is chosen because you don't have options. Only the top drug lords are wealthy with drugs, read Freakonomics for more info about it.
There was an interview from a crime lord who said something along the lines "when people have the possibility to get real jobs, it's very difficult for me to hire".
Drug is one end of the problem, it's also a health problem in itself. But making drug legal won't solve much of violence and misery in the world.
Of course not. The skills and infrastructure needed to run criminal organization are vastly different from those to run a business in a regular market. Apart from that, I don't see the problem with former drug lords turning into 'regular' companies, as long as they stick to the rules of the 'regular' market, which they'll have to if they want to succeed. It's not like Proctor & Gamble goes around beating people up to maintain their edge in the diaper business.
Secondly, it will of course not solve all violence. But it will at least solve the assassinations (and the collateral damage that comes with it) that directly stem from doing business in a lawless world (there is no way to enforce contracts in the underground except by violence and reputation) and it will take away much of the necessity to commit petty crime by small time criminal junkies.
Depending on which country you look at, 20 to 60+ % of prison populations across the world are incarcerated for drug-related offenses. Are you honestly going to argue that all of those people will switch to robbing banks or other violent crimes when drugs are legalized? There are basically three ways to illegally make money nowadays: drugs, violent crimes (including property crimes which may not be 'violent' in the standard definition such as night-time burglary) and fraud (white collar but also smuggling cigarettes etc.) Many of the people who are now in the drug business will simply not have the opportunity to switch into a different field even if they wanted to!
And yes I did read Freakonomics, I don't know what your point is there. While an entertaining read, a quote from a single guy who may or may not be the 'drug lord' he's claiming hardly makes for a convincing argument to defend current drug policy on. It's quite obvious that 'solving' poverty (whatever that may mean, considering that 'poverty' is such an ill-defined concept) is a good way to eliminate crime. It's not something that can be reached with policy though, at least not in the near term. Drug policy is much more contained and within reach of the legislature (by definition even), if it weren't for all the people who oppose drugs on ideological and/or mis-informed factual grounds.
A poor person sells drug because it's the only way to make money. He doesn't make a lot of money out of it and any job would be better as he would get health care and pension on top of it. He would not also risk going to jail or die from a gunshot.
Now there's no more "illegal drugs" to sell.
What does this person do to make money? Remember there's no job for him/her and he somehow needs to eat to live.
I'm not saying the war on drug is fought properly, but between putting in jail all people who sell and/or consume drugs and let everyone do as they want there's probably stuff to be done.
Heroin was legal when first discovered, it was removed from the market because it's a lethal substance.
The "let everyone decide" doesn't work. Food education doesn't beat the commercial from Coca-Cola & the like. You would get the same problems with drugs, except drugs are not only lethal on the short term but somehow make you unproductive.
Then you're going to tell me "but we would regulate these drugs and they would have to comply to strict regulations". Boom. Crime opportunity.
My point is that legalizing some drugs wouldn't change the core of the problem.
Your argument only holds if all poor people would switch to selling drugs. You're saying there is no alternative to selling drugs, which there obviously is, as demonstrated by the hundreds of millions of people worldwide who are poor yet do not sell drugs. If drugs are not illegal, those who are now selling drugs will simple have to do like the other poos people now.
Oh OK well I addressed that point two posts earlier. In short, most people who are now in the drug are not in a position to switch to other forms of crime. So overall the number of crimes and the number of criminals must go down. I have no data to back up any estimates onto how much, but I'd guess that something in the magnitude of 75% of all current criminals who commit crimes because of drugs now will not switch to violent crimes (let alone to fraud, for which - let's be frank here - most petty criminals are too stupid).
Hm. Didn't cocaine get an order of magnitude cheaper a decade ago? And didn't it mostly wipe out inner-city drug violence? Seems I remember Freakonomics covering this.
This is the most ridiculous thing I've heard in weeks on the internet, and believe me, that counts for something.
How can they flood the market with cheaper substances? There is little reason a kilo of cocaine should cost much more than a kilo of coffee (ok maybe 5 times more than that because of lower yield per square cultivated meter). Still, the profit in the drug trade comes directly from it being illegal - i.e. the premium that users pay is a risk premium for the producers, traffickers, whole-sellers and retailers. Making production legal would not only make the product much much much safer but it would also reduce profit margins by so much that the people currently employed in this economic sector would be pushed out of the business by regular pharma / foodstuffs companies almost overnight. Along with it, the corruption, assassination and many of the other externalities would disappear, at the same speed.