I completely agree with both Becker and Posner on the merits of legalization of (certain) drugs. Legalization allows the use of a host of regulatory mechanisms to control use, which are currently not available due to most drugs illegal status.

The important thing to keep in mind however, is that advocates of legalization do not, necessarily approve of drug use - legalization is merely an arguably more pragmatic way to reduce drug use (paradoxically almost) than to pretend that the state can extend perfect control over the use of drugs by the public. Unless supply can be stamped out completely, high pricing will ensure its longevity.

Great article both...

Wow, for the first time since this blog started
I agree with an article. How boring, whatever will I do now.

"We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold."
-- Hunter S. Thompson

I for one approve of drug use. Most of my favorite art and literature was created under the influence. Perhaps in an environment of legalization, society can better mitigate the most harmful effects of addiction. I would love to see science produce a less addictive form of heroin.

Support the free market! Put the cocaine back in Coke!

i don't know what's going on in the us, but in italy the cocaine price is going down. in some places should be even cheaper than heroine and even maijuana.
i suppose there is a strong supply shock. or is the price accomodating to the new and still to enforce government drug policy, which is punishing marijuana sellers stronger than cocaine ones?
i've downloaded the paper and i'm gonan read it through. it should be really interesting.
aloa

"Crime" is a product, and the government "supplies" it by outlawing certain behaviors.

Who demands this product?

People who like to play policeman and judges. Both heroic types who get a kick out of doing good, and corrupt ones who take bribes.

Criminals like it too. Selling drugs is a pretty easy life. Sit around while people come to your house and pay you a high mark-up on your product. And if you get caught...a $40,000/year vacation at the peoples expense...not a bad life.

Certain religious types demand crime, too. How else are they going have people to feel superior to?

And regular folk demand crime. Fictionalized crime is the most watched thing on TV. And real-life shows like "Cops" and the nightly local news, where almost every crime reported, from murder to theft, is fueled by crime.

Yeah, the "War on Drugs" may seem pointless, but if you look at crime as product or service a lot of people "demand", it is easy to understand why it continues. The government could just as well crimilize cheeseburgers or web sites and get the same results...

As a former drug dealer,I've watched the futile effort to stop the drug trade on the supply side. The main effect of this is to turn otherwise law abiding citizens into criminals,and to finance the corruption of law enforcement,and govornment officials in our country and others. The people making the big money are not the ones going to jail,it is most often someone who lacks other opportunities,and does not have the money to hire a quality attorney.Clearly something else must be tried.

I would argue what has been a failure is the pretty much one size fits all approach to drugs. While all drugs can be abused the negative effects on society and the individuals taking them vary widely. Some drugs, alcohol and methamphetamine cause no end of problems, while others, pot, caffine, and most hallucinogens cause few problems. A better drug policy would take that into account.

Second, the cost issue is hogwash for the most part at least in terms of the price of drugs, since most drugs to the typical causual user are supprisingly affordable. A six pack of beer, box of smokes, hit of E, line of coke, hillbilly heroin, whatever can all be had for less than $20. Price is mosly an issue for people that use large amounts of coke, and junkies.

I think it's the nuts and bolts of legalizing drugs that keep the project from being anything more than a pipe dream. (he he).

First, one need to look no further than Big Tobacco to see the problem with large companies supplying people something that may/will kill them, and, under the influence, cause them to kill other people with their cars.

I suppose Congress can pass a law immunizing these producers, but imagine the political firestorm that would touch off. How can you have a suit against a pharm company when one of their potentially helpful drugs goes bad when the company selling crack is immune from suit?

Essentially, it's the end of products liability.

Second, there is a huge NIMBY effect. Who would want a place where you could buy illegal drugs in their back yard?

Third, the brunt of this tax is going to fall on the poor, just like the lotto, as some people complain. Really expensive legal drugs won't cut down the crimes necessary to get money to buy really expensive legal drugs.

Now, that's not to say that we can't draw sensible lines. For example, you are allowed to brew up to 100 gallons of beer a year for personal consumption/sharing with friends, etc. I don't see why a law can't be enacted with a similar status toward pot, but that doesn't have as much of a boon for tax base.

Since becoming a district court law clerk, I have had the opportunity to see the federal war on drugs in very close context. I have a few observations about this issue that are often missed in the old libertarian versus prohibition argument, two of which are absolutely unique to the modern narcotics trade as opposed to the alcohol trade.

1. The impact of intensely stimulating drugs on prenatal development is severe. The estimation of my brother (a medical student) and father (a physician) is that cocaine, crack, and a few other of the really intense drugs is another whole category of medical trauma than alcohol consumed during pregnancy. The evidence would be the neo-natal unit. My brother estimated that perhaps 3 out of 4 babies in that unit are so-called “crack babies.” Alcohol is cheap and widely available, whereas narcotics are expensive and not easy to get readily, so I think there’s not a good argument for equating them in terms of potency. Legalization would tend to further what is one of the saddest circumstances in America, the baby deformed by its mother’s addictive habit. That is why my brother and father are very, very pro-war on drugs, and I think they have a point.

2. Closely related is the phenomenon of the woman who trades sex for drugs and getting to be the girlfriend of the guy with the most jewelry on the block. That creates a major power for local drug dealers who can hook women on drugs and then use that power to get free sex. We regularly sentence men with many babies by many different mothers, none of whom they married. And, of course, some of those babies may be addict babies, too. The power that the dealer has over the woman can be great. This, in my view, constitutes a major reason to legalize drugs, because it lowers the power of the illegal drug dealer and puts the drug sale into a legal marketplace outside of prostitution.

3. Lastly, and this is another argument against the war on drugs, among poor demographics, the temptation to deal drugs as a quick and easy way to make big bucks, instead of a low-wage job, is enormously tempting. They tend to undervalue the potential cost of incarceration long into the future relative to the good money they can make quick. At a certain level, it is a little sad to see those that want to make money through the virtue of self-interest, a natural and valuable male inclination in general, have to check that ambition because of the fact that what they deal is illegal. I’m not excusing it, I’m just saying, a lot of young, poor men would be better off without that option on the table.

Tom: has there been a rash of driving-while-smoking deaths that I haven't heard about? Presuming that you mean Big Alcohol, what's the problem? We don't need to "immunize" the alcohol manufacturers; we just have to recognize that they aren't responsible for what people do after drinking. But sellers may be, if, for instance, they sell to those already intoxicated.

The company selling crack could be liable to the same extent that the tobacco/alcohol sellers could be: adulterated products, fraud/false advertising. But not for the known harms of crack, which risks are assumed by the user.

Second, there is a huge NIMBY effect. Who would want a place where you could buy illegal drugs in their back yard?

Since the drugs wouldn't be illegal, why would that be any different than a bar or liquor store? You might not want one literally in your backyard, but you don't mind having them around.

Professor Becker's argument seems to be conditional on the assumption of price-inelastic demands for drugs like heroin. At least one study (H. Saffer & F.J. Chaloupa, ‘The Demand for Illicit Drugs’, NBER, National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper, 5238, August 1995) estimates US price elasticities of demand for heroin from –1.8 to –1.9 which are highly elastic. In short, supply measures which raise price will have more than proportionate effects in reducing demands. The reason for the high demand elasticities could be that addicted users spend a high fraction of their incomes on drugs so that even small price variations have a big effect on demands.

I think that the effect of legalising heroin by making it legally marketable would be disasterous at least in part because it also reduces a key non-monetary cost of consumption --namely the social cost of doing something society dissapproves of and which it prosecutes.

As Professor Becker has published some of his own work in this NBER series I guess he knows the Saffer/Chaloupa study. Have I got it wrong and what are the five studies he refers to?

Since the drugs wouldn't be illegal, why would that be any different than a bar or liquor store? You might not want one literally in your backyard, but you don't mind having them around.

I don't think that making something legal removes the stigma from it. Casinos are legal in many states, but not often placed in affluent areads.

Back when there were porno theatres, people did not want them in their neighborhoods. And, to be sure, lots of people don't want bars and liquor stores in their neighborhoods either.

Alcohol has been legal for a long time and has acquired some amount of social acceptance as well. Adopting a 1984 style policy reversal ("Drugs are okay now") probably won't make those drugs as acceptable.

And, I have a belief, potentially erroneous, that crack addicts are tougher to deal with than drunks. Most Americans have seen a drunk. Few have dealt with someone high on cocaine or crack.

Re: liability. As stated above, I don't know how society would be able to draw the line between recreational drugs and medicinal ones. If potentially medicinal drugs cause death, there are law suits. If purely recreational ones do, well, that's the risk you've taken by using.

If that were the case, I think the incentive would be for companies to invest in producing new and better recreational drugs and not to produce pharmaceuticals.

Alcohol and tobacco occupy a kind of gray area. They are dangerous, to be sure, but they are also not that dangerous and pretty well accepted by society.

Also, I am pretty sure a lot of people get into car wrecks while smoking and searching for a lighter. :)

Thanks for mentioning HBO's "The Wire." Best - TV - Show - Ever.

The overriding question in the debate over the war on drugs is: compared to what? A few of many questions:

If drugs are legalized, does this really reduce the need to spend money on law enforcement? Or would it simply require law enforcement to focus on different crimes -- use of drugs still illegal (for experienced drug dealers these would still bring a higher return than newly legal drugs), evasion of taxes on legal drugs, crimes from traffic violations to rape to murder committed under the influence of drugs, sale of drugs to minors?

What are the consequences of varying price elasticities? We know, for example, that a heroin addict is less easily deterred from the use of heroin than someone who has not used the drug. Higher street cost of heroin might not reduce use by addicts, but lower heroin prices might create more addicts. The beneficial effects the creation of more addicts might have on government revenues seems a rather bad trade.

How do we deal with the effects of drugs used in combination? Is it likely that people using newly legal drugs will use each drug by itself, as alcohol is consumed by most people who drink? Do we have any way of assessing the public health costs of drugs used in combination?

What of the way society views drug users? Whether one approves of it or not, criminalization does simplify the relationship between the non-drug using public and the drug user by declaring the user to be always in the wrong. Employees can be fired if they use drugs, tenants evicted, students expelled, military personnel disciplined or discharged. What are the consequences of having to renegotiate this relationship -- or, rather, to comprehensively but selectively renegotiate it, since it is most likely only some now illegal drugs that would be legalized?

This last issue is under-discussed, but perhaps particularly significant. The war on drugs does not reflect just a set of policy decisions, but a deeply felt distaste by a large majority of the population for drug use and drug users. Would not legalization require considerable resources to be employed in combating the effects of that distaste -- protecting the drug-using minority from discrimination in hiring, for instance? Sailing into the wind of public opinion always involves costs; are we sure we know what they would be in this case?

Legalization of just one now illegal drug -- marijuana -- with relatively mild influence on behavior and sources of production more numerous than other drugs, could make resolution of these and other questions a little less daunting than they appear if what we are talking about is legalizing all illegal drugs from heroin to cocaine to methamphetamines. But even limiting legalization to marijuana doesn't make the questions go away.

Lastly, I have to disagree with the first poster on this thread. Some advocates of legalizing drugs are such because they recognize the very high costs of enforcing current drug laws and see legalization as a way of reducing them. They are a minority among legalization advocates, however; most of these are in favor of drug use, for themselves if not for everyone. It is not the drug laws alone they object to, but the hostility toward drug use on the part of most of the population, on which those laws are based and without which they would not exist.

This would seem to complicate efforts for drug legalization in any form -- provided of course that no one is proposing to attempt to find a court willing to rule that prosecuting cocaine users and not heavy drinkers violates Constitutional guarantees of equal protection. One never knows these days. But apart from that public opinion must be moved for drug laws to be changed, and it is in my judgment unlikely to be changed by denunciations of public attitudes toward drug use. Moving public oopinion will depend instead on demonstrations not only of the high costs of enforcing existing laws, but also on some evidence that we know the costs of what we propose to replace them. Becker provides the first, but does not seem to have thought much about the second.

I posted a discussion of the issues regarding legalization of drugs at http://blawgandecon.blogspot.com/2005/03/seth-drugs.html if anyone is interested.

(forgive my English, writing from Italy)

wouldn't it even better to have drug as cheap as you can? so no company would have the interest to raise new customers by distributing free samples and having new people getting addicted?
so may be the drug distribution can be a state-driven affair: anonymous free M.D. prescription for old addicted consumers, almost no new consumer, almost free drug.
the only problems are the new syntetic low-cost drugs: in this case may be there is "room" for price differentiation and resistance to doctor prescription, but since the war on illegal drugs is a failure I do not see better proposal.

First a response to the 'crack baby' comment. My understanding is that the crack baby syndrome was mostly revealed to be a myth. That is 'crack babies' are more a result of usage of alcohol and tobacco than crack. If you disagree or want to make medical claims about harms how about some journal citations.

Secondly while I mostly agree with Becker I wanted to take issue with an implicit assumption in his post. That is the assumption that it is a valid governmental goal to reduce drug abuse. While reducing drug use can often serve other valid government goals ultimately the role of the government should be to improve the welfare of its citizens and only fight drugs where they negatively impact this welfare.

Of course the expected response is that drugs have harmful health effects and reduce productivity. This may be true but the welfare of the citizen is not the same think as making the citizen a cog in the machine. The same arguments might be made for chocolate but we think the enjoyment can outweight the negative effects.

In short the government should be about promoting the happiness of its citizens. Now many drugs (crack) may be shown to mostly decress happiness but it is far from clear that say marijuanna does this. We need to get away from our puritanical roots and accept that some drugs might be good simply because people like and enjoy taking them (the same reason we find TV and chocolate acceptable).

Personally I think this is part of a broader error of reasoning where we view 'natural' brain chemistry as fundamentally different than unnatural brain chemistry but I think this is a discussion for another day.

QUOTE: The impact of intensely stimulating drugs on prenatal development is severe. /END QUOTE

This is an excellent reason to punish those who use the drugs while pregnant. But it is a terrible reason to continue a general war on drugs. Just as we punish drunk drivers for driving while drunk and we do not punish ALL drinkers.

To suggest that all drugs should be illegal for everyone because some irresponsible mothers use them is to rely on the general approach to social policy that "since some people will choose poorly when it comes to X, no one should be allowed to make any choice when it comes to X".

Bad policy.

nmg

I'm very pleased to see that proposals for drug legalization are increasingly discussed, even spreading to the mainstream. It reminds me of John Stuart Mill's adage that every movement goes through three stages: ridicule, discussion, adoption.

Not too long ago, people who advocated drug legalization were ridiculed; the idea was considered by many to be beyond the pale. I'm glad to see that it looks like we're finally in the discussion stage.

One cost that the above analysis fails to include is search costs. Given the underground nature of the product, search costs can represent an enormous portion of the overall price of the good, particularly if it means traveling to neighborhoods one might not ordinarily venture to. In fact, in terms of demand, if search costs were reduced to near-zero, due to legality, I would think this would overwhelm any increase in the price that would result from a combination of legality and taxes.

I can't wait until the government legalizes marijuana and Haliburton finds a way to make a buck off of it.

"No war for weed!"

Amen. Great argument.

This is how I think product liability would pan out:

Drug companies would be held strictly liable for the harmful effects of their products, as are nearly all companies in the US who produce consumer goods. This means that producers must pay for all harm caused by their products, regardless of whether or not the consumer was being careless or just plain stupid when using the product. When producing and pricing the drugs, producers will count the projected costs of lawsuits and settlements as just another production cost, and the resulting price and quantity produced would be the optimal amount. So, product liability remains intact, and it even achieves the optimal production of drugs, assuming that externalities can be adequately regulated or compensated for.

If you have a society with drug users legally buying drugs and rotting in the streets, all with implicit public approval, you're sending a message that we don't care if people want to destroy themselves. Is a methadone clinic more a function of compassion or indifference? Hard to tell. The moral apathy is potentially very corrosive. That's why there is no legalization.

In re: crack babies, I stand humbly corrected.

http://www.come-over.to/FAS/crackbaby.htm

For that reason, the other two phenomena I find interesting, the narcotics-prostitution connection and the "punishing those who want to make money" issue both counsel in favor of legalization + high tax.

I find the narcotics-prostitution connection particularly troubling, personally, as that creates so many babies out of wedlock, in addition to the harms of prostitution that the woman gets into when she hangs around drug dealers and does drugs.

Pferree brings up a point that I would like to see discussed more.

Most companies don't get away with producing a product as dangerous as tobacco. If Sony made a TV that had a great picture, but burned the retina (retintae?) of 1/3rd of the people who watched it, the CPSC would have said television pulled off the market. And, that's only retina burning, not lung cancer.

Tobacco is the exception to products liability in America, not the rule.

So, while I agree with Pferree that firms would build the cost of potential liability into the price, I'm not certain if that can be done effectively without creating a black market.

Given the taxes, and now the cost of liability, I doubt these new legal suppliers will be able to compete with the already entrenched network of illegal suppliers.

Becker mentions taxes on cigarettes as an example why their won't be a underground drug market, but I don't think the analogy holds up. People are used to getting their cigarettes legally. People aren't used to getting their drugs legally, AND there is already a network of illegal drug suppliers out there. Cigarettes don't (I don't think) have such an underground. I doubt the illegal drug market would fold up shop just because people could buy drugs legally.

Illegal drug use during work hours reduces worker effectiveness. Some illegal drugs reduce performance even if only consumed off-the-job. Many companies will fire you immediately for using illegal drugs, yet most of these do not perform drug testing. Business relies upon the US Government to reduce the probability that their workers are using performance-reducing drugs.

Remove the illegal status and businesses would be directly impacted several ways. Each business would need to determine which drugs are performance-reducing and privately ban their workers from using them, adding medical analysis and legal agreement costs. They would need to test their own workers for drug use, increasing the cost of doing business. They would have a harder time justifying firing a worker for using (now) legal drugs in their free time, increasing the likelihood of lawsuits brought by fired employees.

Government safety regulations would need to be written to ensure public safety. We can't have LSD-tripping pilots or cab drivers, but they can snort coke as long as it is out of their system by work-time. Bring on the doctors and lawyers to create this new regulatory realm!

Insurance would now need to separately evaluate each company's probability of drug use impacting their operations - since an incorrectly installed brake pad by a stoned mechanic is a liability. It is much easier to apply a uniform probability of drug use across all companies.

I agree that the overall costs would be lower and more fully borne by those benefited, but I don't see drug legalization coming due to the entrenched interests.

Hey, while you are attempting to legalize all drugs, why not copy the Mexican pharmacy model. If you know what drug you need in Mexico, you go to the pharmacy not the doctor. This frees up doctors to see patients who really need a doctor and not just a prescription.

Great article and I couldn't agree more. One thing I would add is on the philosophical side: the state currently chooses which drugs are legal and which aren't according to historical prejudice and little more- i.e. alcohol and tobacco are much deadlier drugs than many illegal ones and yet are celebrated and advertised throughout society- it is morally wrong to have such an inconsistent and illogical system. The fact that someone who wants to drink a beer or smoke a cigarette can do so lawfully while someone who wants to smoke marijuana or use cocaine risks hard jail time is insane.

J.S.

http://voicesofreason.info

Just this morning, I watched a segment of The Today Show that introduced me to the term "Skittling." Apparently teens are popping Coricidin and other antihistamines (that have the appearance of Skittles candies) at 4 or 5 times the recommended dosage to get high. It occurs to me having read Becker (haven't gotten to Posner yet) that if people can find ways to abuse legal drugs (setting aside the legality of alcohol and tobacco consumption), the "war on drugs" doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of every really working - at least not as it's currently structured.

Mr. Becker's very reasonable remarks should be heeded. Unfortunately, the war on drugs has reached the point at which the combatants are now non-state actors and militaries in Latin America. Those who are fighting the war down there are looking at the very edge of the fabric of civil society coming apart. It is enough to frighten anyone into either further funding the war on drugs or adopting a radical move to legalize all drugs. The move to legalize may come too late for significant portions of Latin America.

What are the three greatest black market commodities? Arms, Drugs, Oil. They can each be exchanged for the other and are in the war-crime bazaar.

dijit says: "Many companies will fire you immediately for using illegal drugs, yet most of these do not perform drug testing.".

I would like to know what planet he's living on. What company doesn't do drug testing nowadays? Drug testing for businesses is a multi-billion dollar industry. It costs businesses far more in terms of what it costs our society by having millions of people in jail than drug use by employees does. People who have a problem with drugs should be treated, not incarcerated. Treating drug problems as a public health problem instead of a criminal problem makes much more sense.

For years politicians used the war on drugs as an easy way to show they were tough on crime and pro family values. Most of them advocated going after the supply, since this defines the "bad guy" as foreigners and therefore not constituents. They didn't have to worry much about opposition to this policy which was ineffective against drug abuse but very effective in getting elected.

Over the last 10 years there has been a sea change in drug use in America that has been under-reported by the media. Currently the most popular drug is methamphetamine. It doesn't allow for cliche versions of the drug culture as it is not an inner city problem. It is just as common in rural areas as in cities, perhaps more common.

So now the "bad guy" is us. It's not the Columbians or the Jamaicans. Meth is American made and American consumed. This makes the old style War on Drugs even less effective since interdiction at borders is no longer a valid tactic.

This might be a good topic for a follow-on study. What are the economic costs of a "closed" system of illegal drug distribution in America. It seems that the approach being advocated by Mr. Becker would still be valid, but I think there might be some other factors that come to light when the focus shifts to Meth.

I'll go back to saying the focusing on the cost of drugs is a mistake. Your typical user of drugs doesn't spend an inordanant amount of money on the drugs themselves.

The major problem with some drugs is the social disruption they cause. Drugs like marijuana, tobacco, caffine, and hallucinogens tend not to effect users lives very much at least in the short term. (Tobacco will shorten your life and I know a guy that got tongue cancer from smoking snot)

Other drugs, alcohol, cocaine, and methamphetamine do cause a lot of social disruption. It's hard to hold a job when you're abusing them and people who do use them often act in socially disruptive ways. To wit, cops hate dealing with drunks, crack addicts, and speed freaks. Whereas cops don't usually care about pot heads, and think a cup of coffee goes good with donuts.

That said, a suggestion is that it would probably be a good idea to pretty much give up on keeping marijuana illegal. Mostly because the social disruption caused by marijuana is small.

A good way to do that, which is sort of unique to marijuana is to simply allow people to grow small amounts of marijuana for personal consumption the same way we allow people to brew beer and wine. At the same time make it a simple misdemeanor to sell. The advantage is that society doesn't have to condone the use of marijuana via taxing it or allowing companies to openly sell it, and yet doesn't have to go out of it's way to condem it either.

My main problems with Becker's argument are the assumption of selfless and benevolent public officials and the related misplaced incentives due to directly linking government revenue to drug use via taxes.



If the goal is to use government to force the reduction of drug use (a goal I don't agree with, btw), then why make it in the government's interest to keep usage as high as possible in order to keep those tax dollars rolling in? This is the same problem with having proceeds from speeding tickets padding the coffers of the very police departments who issue them - it eventually has nothing to do with public safety.



Those tax dollars have to go into somebody's budget, and anyone who's gone through the hassle and expense of achieving a public office victory on the cutthroat political battlefield isn't likely to give up control of them very easily.

well the first thing i'd like to say is that there is significant difference between the ideologies of people in countries where drugs has become a major problem and where it still is not one of the big pains.
lets take for example my country India . what oi find here is that the few guys who are into drugs are not at all given respect and considered losers. so even before starting it one has to have a serious thought on what if his parents come to know about it??
what will they think about him??
and so on??
this what if factors are the prime reasons most of the guys who are offered , turn them down. now this comes into picture due to the tradition of joint famioly sytem in india, due to which there is close bonding between parents and their children at all points of time.
here is where the west really loses and the guys who are offered put their friends(those who offer)
above family and they just succumb to it.
If this habit has to be eradicated the most impoprtant thing will be to develop the close bonding between son and parents(even when they are old). so that the son thinks about what if ?? factors before taking drugs.

now i don't agree at all with you guys saying that
drug production and distribution be made legal. sir you seem to be taking sides with the drug consumption and you are treating as something good.
what you need to change is your paradigm on this topic.Just think about the future that once you make drugs production legal big companies will get into it (might be some marlboros will jump in). now they will market it furiously like what they do with cigarettes. now seriously do you think cigarette smoking is a good or decent habit. teen do that to look macho. same will happen with drugs and it will come out as the biggest problem humanity wil face in its history.
wbat you advice will just reduce or remove the so called drug lords from the scene and will bring american companies into the scene.
and once they come into picture it will become really easy to acquire drugs for normal people, and restraing its use will a big pain for the government. drug companies will make all kinds of drugs available to everybody in may be registered franchises but how will you limit the carrying capacity of single person. a man can then purchase 1 months drug requirement at a time from one shop or from different ones and end up consuming them in 3 days .
what do you say on that????

Well said, prawal. This entire debate is about social norms. Those who already feel drug use is acceptable want to change society. Thankfully we havn't yet reached a point where the majority feels that way, but we're getting there fast. The laws will eventually change to keep up with public opinion. Personally, I think the stigma attached to drugs is a good thing, and the same applies to tobacco now that people are starting to stigmatize that. As for alcohol... hey... I'm from Milwaukee :)



Hey Clifford... "For every black that uses there are eight to twenty whites that use or sell." That's rather racist, wouldn't you say? Any facts to back that up?

I think that the effect of legalising heroin by making it legally marketable would be disasterous at least in part because it also reduces a key non-monetary cost of consumption --namely the social cost of doing something society dissapproves of and which it prosecutes.

This assumes that: 1) Legislation is the most effective means for effecting social behavior, and 2) The ostensible opprobrium associated with drug use is merited.

...and just to be punctilious, I should let the good professor know, if he doesn't already, that the "Afghani" is Afghanistan's monitary unit, whereas "Afghan" is the adjective.

Everything said about he war on drugs is true, maybe more. But how do we know what an America of legalized drugs would really be like? More or less consumption? More, I think. Thus, more destroyed lives. And the government would then be profiting on the destruction of people's lives. Is that what we want? Do you trust the government to do anything honorable once it begins to make massive profits in the form of taxes on formerly illegal and still illicit drugs? Seems like we would just be trading one set of drug dealers for another one that will be even worse.

Every Commander-in-Chief since Nixon has lost the War on Drugs. And its the fault of conservatives like Palooka. Palooka and his ilk transport cocaine across state borders to enjoy it in the privacy of their exurban homes and nostrils. It is their inelastic lust for cocaine that attracts smuggled china white to our shores like a NASA space magnet. The only solution is to reduce demand amongst those insulated from the homoerotic horrors of the corrections system. Therefore, we must conduct random airstrikes on low-crime neighborhoods with relatively large numbers of Republican voters. Coupled with partial legalization of drug-dealing and prostitution in inner-city public schools, this solution would dramatically decrease demand for drugs in the continental United States.

So is it OK to legalize prostitution or to walk naked on the streets, as long as non-victim activities are taxed at an "appropriate" rate?

If illegal drugs were legalized there would be at least a hundred million more people who'd consume them. The current abstainers fear losing their jobs and social status if they were to consume illegal drugs. Moreover, as soon as the drugs are legalized, the firms that would produce and distribute them would lobby to keep the tax rates on the leglaized drugs to be similar to the rates on alcohol or cigerettes or other medicinal drugs. If an activity is legal, what's the justification to tax it at 200%? The tax rate will be determined by the political reality - i.e., by the pressure groups!

When a society prohibits an activity, because it's against the common sense of its people, the goal is to purge it. For example, we don't tolerate perjury or unwillingness to cooperate with govt. agencies or the grand jury. Becker and Posner seem to be defining prohibition as something the society discourages (to an acceptable level of consumption), rather than to mean "ZERO" tolerance. The fact that we can't afford to spend infinite resources to achieve zero tolerance does not imply we ought to tax the activity so that the equilibrium level of the activity under the tax regime is equal to what it's under prohibition!

You're embarrassing yourself, Johnny... Palooka hasn't even chimed in on this post. Is it your goal to get comments disabled? Please keep things civil.

If illegal drugs were legalized there would be at least a hundred million more people who'd consume them.

That assertion is contraticted by The Netherlands' defacto legalization of cannabis. The fact is that under that legal regime, cannabis use rates in The Netherlands for 30 years have remained very much lower than rates in the USA, where it is prohibited.

See the CEDRO URLs in the Posner comments thread for the numbers.

I am disappointed that you diluted a decent argument by concerning yourself with whether demand or supply should be artificially limited. You ostensibly abstained from a position on whether less drug use is good for society--good work--but then went on to formulate your argument based on that exact assumption. There is only one reason to make that concession: you aren't bold enough to make the stronger case that the state should have no authority with regard to the use of intoxicating substances by an individual in cases where there is no potential for the harm of another party.

"This approach can be effective if say every 10% increase in drug prices has a large negative effect on the use of drugs. This is called an elastic demand. However, the evidence from more than a dozen studies strongly indicates that the demand for drugs is generally quite inelastic; that is, a 10% rise in their prices reduces demand only by about 5%, which means an elasticity of about ½. This implies that as drug prices rise, real spending on drugs increases, in this case, by about 5% for every 10% increase in price. So if the war on drugs increased the price of drugs by at least 200%- estimates suggest this increase is about right- spending on drugs would have increased enormously, which it did."

The demand for illicit drugs is quite inelastic (especially for highly addictive substances), but your point is weakened by several considerations.

The passage of time increases elasticity of demand. Though the elasticity of demand for illicit drugs may be quite inelastic in the short run, demand does becomes more elastic as time passes. Any drug strategy (whether criminalization or legalization) should be considering long-run elasticities, not short-run. Moreover, it is likely that drugs are inelastic for price increases, but elastic for price decreases. Think about it, Mr. Becker. You are making the case, if I understand it correctly, that the demand for drug use is inelastic for price increases AND decreases. Therefore, under this rationale, you conclude that legalization is the proper course of action because legalization (coupled with high taxes) will result in roughly the same amount of demand. Yet the underlying reasons for the inelasticity of demand for price increases does not apply to price decreases. Yes, demand for drugs (in the short-run) does not decrease much when the price increases. The number one reason, in my estimation, is because the consumers of those drugs have developed a pyschological or physical dependence. Addiction. The same inelasticity, then, should not be expected when prices are going down instead of up, as that would allow addicts to more liberally feed their addictions, and entice new consumers with lower prices.

It means little to those who support the war on drugs that expenditures rise. The important variables are reducing the number of individuals choosing to try drugs and reducing the consumption of current drug-users.

Your point about inelasticity only has significant force if one believes the demand for drug use is inelastic for price decreases as well as increases. However, that assumption is flawed, for the reasons I stated above.

I know Becker included a provision which would attempt to maintain high prices for drugs, avoiding some of the increased consumption by charging heavy taxes, but I just think that is infeasible. It is simply unrealistic to believe legalization would not greatly increase the consumption of drugs or not lower prices. The increased quality (no more worrying about tainted, toxic, or deadly drugs), widely avaliable information on prices, competition, decreased social stigma, lack of legal ramifications, and ease of acquisition is bound to increase consumption greatly (through lowering of prices from increased competition and consumer information and through the elimination of many of the non-monetary costs associated with now illicit drug use). Your plan is nothing but a presciption for disaster.

"You're embarrassing yourself, Johnny... Palooka hasn't even chimed in on this post. Is it your goal to get comments disabled? Please keep things civil."

Palooka always chimes in, eventually, you %$^&head.

As I stated before, inelasticity is the crux of the matter ("Palooka and his ilk transport cocaine across state borders to enjoy it in the privacy of their exurban homes and nostrils").

I disagree with Palooka's point that inelasticity must deteriorate over time. Highly inelastic drugs can almost always be price-gouged, because the demand is not directly linked to free choice and the ability to save, but rather physiological dependency and brute bad luck.

Someone who lives the posh life in an Arizona exurb cna afford to allocate disposable income toward recreational drug use ("It is their inelastic lust for cocaine that attracts smuggled china white to our shores like a NASA space magnet"). But improverished Africans ailing from AIDS in nations without developed market economies, basic property rights, stable governments, or suitable roads and healthcare infrastructure to deliver drugs to potential patients cannot freely save a portion of their yearly wealth to support their unprotected sex "habit" (not to mention that infected babies cannot choose their parents or conditions of birth). Nor can they reliably access and use prophylactics, because, again, their markets are failed ones. Even if, over time, their markets markedly improved and their personal savings compounded over time, of which their is no guarantee, the physiological need of any indidividual for AIDS medication remains constant and inelastic. Having greater access to portable CD players does not make one more wiling to die from AIDS, and having more money to pay for AIDS medication does not reduce one's willingness to pay for it.

As I said, reducing demand requires two steps:
1. Reducing demand amongst those whose inelasticity is due to social conditions (which could be time-sensitive, if we include cultural norms in the mix; but then, cultural norms may merely reflect personal savings) ("The only solution is to reduce demand amongst those insulated from the homoerotic horrors of the corrections system. Therefore, we must conduct random airstrikes on low-crime neighborhoods with relatively large numbers of Republican voters.").

2. Partial legalization to maximize the benefits Becker suggests ("Coupled with partial legalization of drug-dealing and prostitution in inner-city public schools, this solution would dramatically decrease demand for drugs in the continental United States").

"I disagree with Palooka's point that inelasticity must deteriorate over time. Highly inelastic drugs can almost always be price-gouged, because the demand is not directly linked to free choice and the ability to save, but rather physiological dependency and brute bad luck."

With the passage of time it is more likely addicts will seek treament and succeed in kicking their habit. Obviously, in the very long-term, the addicts will die off.

If the price is prohibtively expensive, then fewer and fewer new users will try the drug in the first place (resulting in fewer people becoming addicted). So, over time elasticity does change, as current users leave the market from recovery or death and fewer new addicts replace them.

[[[It is simply unrealistic to believe legalization would not greatly increase the consumption of drugs or not lower prices. The increased quality (no more worrying about tainted, toxic, or deadly drugs), widely avaliable information on prices, competition, decreased social stigma, lack of legal ramifications, and ease of acquisition is bound to increase consumption greatly (through lowering of prices from increased competition and consumer information and through the elimination of many of the non-monetary costs associated with now illicit drug use).]]]

With this I disagree. The more potent a drug is known to be, the less of it people may use. While taking tainted drugs is a risk removed under a regime of legalization, overdosing on extremely high quality drugs is a risk amplified. The more lethal a drug is known to be, the less of it people may use.

Just to use numbers to illustrate the obvious: let's say I want to get high at the level I am comfortable (5). Pre-legalization a joint gets me somewhat high (+1), so I usually smoke five joints (+5). Post-legalization the quality of marijuana increases, so a joint will get me toasted (+4), so the optimal amount of joints for me is one-and-a-quarter. Unfortunately, I do not know this. So I smoke two joints (+8). Holy moly! Weed is craaazy! Next time, I go back to one joint (+4), and am unsatisfied. Figuring things out, next time I smoke one joint with a little bit extra ganja in it (+5). Voila! Anyway, the point is I have become more conscientious about my drug use, developed a habit of being responsible with regard to my health, and am inclined to use less in raw quantity than I would have before.

Now, you may say "So what if when the quality goes up, the amount smoked goes down? The total amount of inebriation remains the same!" Yes, the instances of pot-smoking go down also. If I sit around and smoke five joints, that is a party. Time to call my friends! If I smoke one joint rather quickly, that is a solitary event. The amount of bad social behavior will go down, because people will not engage in so much GROUP drug use, which diminishes the peer-pressure element of drug use.

Legalization may create norms against group, public use.

"With the passage of time it is more likely addicts will seek treament and succeed in kicking their habit. Obviously, in the very long-term, the addicts will die off."

This assumes that there is treatment available. Isn't that the hurdle in the AIDS situation? There may not be access to treatment.

{{{"With the passage of time it is more likely addicts will seek treament and succeed in kicking their habit. Obviously, in the very long-term, the addicts will die off."

This assumes that there is treatment available. Isn't that the hurdle in the AIDS situation? There may not be access to treatment.}}}

Not only that, John, but the addicts might be replaced by newer addicts and not die off all that quickly. My grandfather was a heroin addict and he just died at age 103.

I agree with Palooka that the elasticity of demand increases significantly over time--like a period of decades. Tobacco in the short run has a very inelastic demand, and yet tobacco consumption over the past 50 years has declined significantly for various reasons--partly the social stigma taking hold, partly taxes, partly enhanced technology to aid quitting, and partly government programs to encourage quitting. The policy of making drugs illegal is designed for the long term, so that must be taken into consideration. Right now, the two most abused and costly drugs out there are cigarettes and alcohol, both of which are legal.

The practical problem with making drugs legal and then taxing them is that I do not believe that preventing a black market to avoid taxes is as easy as 1-2-3. If, for example, taxes are 200% on pot, no one could grow pot commercially, because thieves would just harvest it from the fields at night, or farmers would be highly tempted to sell a little of their crop on the side and make big bucks, something which would be incredibly difficult to detect systematically, given that the substance is no longer illegal.

That, I think, would hopelessly doom the plan of legalizing and using taxes to achieve the same deterrent effect, especially given the cost to the policy of lowering the social stigma by legalizing the product.

"If the price is prohibtively expensive, then fewer and fewer new users will try the drug in the first place (resulting in fewer people becoming addicted)."

Both John and Martha are missing the point. Addicts aren't like consumers who walk into a supermarket. One of the ways drug dealers create addicts is by offering freebies. So price is not an issue for a first time user of an extremely addictive drug like heroin. And if potential drug users were like consumers in a supermarket, well, supermarkets have rebates, and sales, and all sorts of discounts to get people to try a product for the first time. It might be true that not everyone will have access to Procter and Gamble heroin, but the RiteAid brand heroin will be available to everyone, at least as a starter drug for little kids. Isn't the difference between our context and the African context precisely that companies have nothing to gain by selling drugs to "ailing Africans"? We have disposable income and will pay for drugs; they just can't afford to -- either way we can both be price-gouged, though. Maybe I'm missing something here.

"Tobacco in the short run has a very inelastic demand, and yet tobacco consumption over the past 50 years has declined significantly for various reasons--partly the social stigma taking hold, partly taxes, partly enhanced technology to aid quitting, and partly government programs to encourage quitting."

Ah, if this is the debate, then it is one of necessity versus history. Demands for drugs in the past has grown more elastic over time due to a change in various social conditions. I think John's point was that demand for drugs need not NECESSARILY become more elastic over time; in other words, demand for drug X could be inelastic for ever, and we are making a bad assumption if we assume that simply because it has happened before it must necessarily happen in the future in any particular case. Doesn't your stockbroker tell you that past performance is no guarantee of future stock price? I think John is saying we can't beg the question here. That would be fallacious.

Good tabacco analogy.

I disagree on your worry about an underground market. My worry is quite the opposite--I believe corporations will be all too good at developing, marketing, and protecting their product.

There is some underground market in cigarettes, driven by the avoidance of taxes. Taxes are high and getting higher, what is the experience in that realm? How many people actually buy cigarettes out of the back of a truck? It happens, but what percent?

I don't focus on the tax issue. If legalizing drugs is going to goes a proliferation of drug use, then I am against it. I think logic necessitates that would happen. A belief that most drug use is benign must drive this proposal, because I don't see it holding up any other way. It WILL increase drug use and the number of drug users. Is that worth the tax revenue?

"I disagree with Palooka's point that inelasticity MUST deteriorate over time."

Yeah, I think that's right, Martha. We're arguing over whether demand for drugs [necessarily] MUST become more elastic over time. I don't think there is any economic LAW that posits that. I'd like to see the research on it. My initial impression is that it can, and in some circumstances it has, but not that it ALWAYS MUST. I don't think that's an ironclad rule, just an ill-advised presumption. Just my take on it!

"One of the ways drug dealers create addicts is by offering freebies."

Absolutely, but a rational person would take into account the exoribitant cost they are likely to pay in the future. Now, most drug users aren't completely rational, but it would impact the over all picture (because it would effect a portion of potential drug users).

The important thing to consider is what would happen under a legalized regime with much lower prices, higher quality, no legal risk, lessened social stigma. It is absolutely ridiculous to argue that it would not increase drug use. I think the debate rests in how bad is that increase, and do those increased social and economic costs outweigh any benefits legalization is likely to bring (increased revenue, elimination of perceived injustice, etc). I am absolutely open to reform of many kinds, but Becker's libertarian fantasy is simply absurd.

"It WILL increase drug use and the number of drug users. Is that worth the tax revenue?"

Where is the ***proof*** (or even an econometric argument) for this? Is this NECESSARILY so?

"It is absolutely ridiculous to argue that it would not increase drug use."

That's just begging the question! I think NotAWeedSmokerInReality made a very convincing and rational argument!

"Now, most drug users aren't completely rational,"

Didn't Gary Becker win a Nobel for proving the proposition that contradicts this?

RWS,

I changed my other mind. If Becker wishes to keep drug prices at current levels, that is very likely to drive a booming black market, negating much of the tax revenue benefit. I do think a tax burdern similar to cigarettes could be maintained, given that experience.

I also do not understand how one could charge the same in a legalized system. Isn't a large cost of the "War on Drugs" the fact that addicts have to engage in criminal behavior to finance their habit? At least now they can sell drugs, in a legalized system they would be only left with theft (often violent). Taxing to achieve comparable price deterence seems to nullify the only redeeming value legalization has (at least to me). You would have addicts mugging and stealing and beating and killing more than ever.

"a rational person would take into account the exoribitant cost they are likely to pay in the future."

No, a rational person would not quote me out of context. And a rational person would recognize that the future costs would be weighed against the steady income flow from buyers with inelastic demand: addicts. That allows drug dealers to exercise monopoly power and price-gouge in the future. Monopoly power into the foreseeable future is not a "cost". It is an gigantic benefit.

What I said was:
"Addicts aren't like consumers who walk into a supermarket. One of the ways drug dealers create addicts is by offering freebies. So price is not an issue for a first time user of an extremely addictive drug like heroin."

Now, do people who take heroin calculate future costs very well? No. But NotAWeedSmokerInReality made a pretty good argument that caclculating future costs inheres in responsible drug use, which is an argument in favor of legalization.

Martha, your question stretches the limits of this debate. Here are a few cites that make the empirical argument that legalization increases drug usage:

57 Vanderbilt L. Rev. 783, n. 433 (citing Stanley Neustadter, Legalization Legislation: Confronting the Details of Policy Choices, in How To Legalize Drugs 388, 393 (Jefferson M. Fish ed., 1998)).

Benjamin & Roger Leroy Miller, Undoing Drugs: Beyond Legalization 186-249 (1991).

For arguments that the US illegalization approach has significantly reduced drug usage...

U.S. Efforts in the International Drug War, in Searching for Alternatives: Drug-Control Policy in the United States 360 (Melvyn B. Krauss & Edward P. Lazear eds., 1991).

James A. Inciardi, Against Legalization of Drugs, in Legalize it? Debating American Drug Policy 141, 161 (Arnold S. Trebach & James A. Inciardi eds., 1993).

----

I am sticking by my argument that the taxation approach to regulation would be costly and impractical, Palooka. The black market for tobacco exists already, for states with higher taxation. If the tax were really high, such that the price deterrent were equal to the high price of narcotics, there would be a whole lot of cheating, much more than now with the comparatively low tax.

I believe that raising the price of drugs is more efficiently done by making possession illegal altogether and choosing the optimal deterrent price increase by the amount of enforcement rather than legalizing it and trying to tax it up to that price. Much harder to do, especially with something as easy to grow as marijuana.

"You would have addicts mugging and stealing and beating and killing more than ever."

Isn't that like saying that sending AIDS drugs to Africa would disincentivize personal saving, so don't do it? Please elaborate.

RWS,

I am sure those studies show how legalization CAN increase drug use. I do not think ANY of them show that legalization DEFINITIVELY AND NECESSARILY MUST increase drug use. That was the point. We shouldn't beg the question. If it may not increase at all, or it might just increase a little, why are we making silly predictions about rampant violence and mob rule?

Martha,

I really don't know how AIDS got injected into this debate. The comparison doesn't make sense to me.

Becker implied that he would maintain current drug prices via taxation in order to prevent increased drug use. I don't think that's possible for many reasons, already discussed.

BUT if it were, then it would take one of the biggest benefits away from legalization. Many addicts either sell drugs or steal to finance their expensive habits. If the drugs cost the same, then the addict is left with the same cost, but with fewer options. He can no longer sell drugs. He is left with theft, which is often violent, to support his habit. Thus, under legalization, where prices are maintained at very high levels, theft and violent crime is likely to RISE.

AIDS got injected into the debate because it related to another class of inelastic drug users whose social conditions are different and whose social behavior contradicts your argument. You failed to answer my question and gave an irrelevant response.

AIDS sufferers living in failed states whose only incentive to save would be to afford AIDS medication (no consumer goods at market to buy, no consumer culture, no plans of retirement because life expectancy is so low) would no longer have that incentive if the drugs were given to them for free. Their demand for the drugs remains inelastic regardless of the regime (free drugs, or high priced drugs), but their incentive to save drops off in the free drug regime (they go back to living day-to-day). Your argument to me seems no different from saying, "Well, we want Africans to save their wealth, so let's not give them AIDS drugs." It's an argument of the same form, yet clearly immoral in the African AIDS context. Justify your position.

Anyway, your notion of legalization is silly. "If the drugs cost the same, then the addict is left with the same cost, but with fewer options. He can no longer sell drugs." Why would legalization prevent private sales of drugs? Why wouldn't the addict just get a job as a regulated drug-dealer? That's an additional option not previously available. You are assuming that "addicts" are persons prone to steal. My grandfather was an addict, he died at age 103, and he never stole a damn thing.

Drug addicts don't require drugs to save their lives, that's the difference. I don't think any further explanation is necessary.

Of course not every addict steals or must steal. But are you implying that addicts are as law abiding as non-addicts?

A drug addict in a legalized system MAY choose to engage in the black market, but there will be fewer opportunities, and they will still be breaking the law.

Remember I was only arguing that Becker's proposal--charging high taxes to maintain price deterrence--would exacerbate the problem of drug-driven crime (and only if it succeeded in maintaining high prices, which I doubt it can).

Oh yeah... Regulated drug dealer???? And my conception of legalization is "silly?"

"Drug addicts don't require drugs to save their lives, that's the difference."

AIDS sufferers don't require drugs to save their lives, either, so long as they save enough. That's the point, you moron.

"Oh yeah... Regulated drug dealer???? And my conception of legalization is "silly?""

Bars in Amsterdam that sell weed are regulated drug dealers. Prostitutes in the red district are regulated whores. How is that silly? It's really, you dolt.

"are you implying that addicts are as law abiding as non-addicts?"

In a system where drug use is legalized, why not?

"Remember I was only arguing that Becker's proposal--charging high taxes to maintain price deterrence--would exacerbate the problem of drug-driven crime (and only if it succeeded in maintaining high prices, which I doubt it can)."

You don't seem to have convinced anyone!

The AIDS argument does make some sense, I think. I think Palooka is saying that if we pity Africans then we should send them drugs, but we don't pity drug addicts (who are really thieves, anyhow), so we shouldn't legalize drugs. I don't see the legal or public policy basis for that distinction. We could easily value personal saving in the abstract more than the lives of distant foreigners, and for that reason not send AIDS drugs to Africans; we could value drug use more than private property and tolerate higher levels of stealing by drug addicts in a legalization regime. But there is no legal or public policy basis for these values. It's just, I guess, prejudice. There's no logic to it. I think Martha's point is that Palooka is being illogical and arbitrary.

Palooka, don't be nasty to Martha just because she's a woman. Larry Summers notwithstanding, we're just as intelligent than you are.

I hardly know where to begin. I guess I'll start at random.

Most businesses wouldn't need to test employees for drugs. Most businesses don't need that now. What they need to test their employees for is adequate performance of their duties. An employee who can't do his job is a liability. An employee who does his job OK is not a liability. There could be an HR issue why the employee is not doing his work adequately and how he might be rehabilitated, but the central issue is the work. If drugs are legalised and a particular employee can do a particular job under some sort of influence, then there's no problem. Today the problem is that businesses don't want to be seen to tolerate illegal drug use by their employees.

It's certainly an issue about big corporations making profitable drugs. The tobacco, alcohol, and pharmaceutical companies are big lobbyists now. Not something we'd want to encourage. But there's a simple solution: government-owned drug corporations. People argue that competition-free government industries tend to be models of incompetence and inefficiency. In this case that's fine. If they're too incompetent to lobby effectively then even better. Of course it would be important to have the inefficiency show up as cost of production rather than quality. So there is room for problems.

Similarly, if we want to restrict supply there's an obvious alternative to laws and enforcement to raise prices. We could do -- price controls! Price controls are notorious for causing bad distribution of resources. When Nixon was involved in price controls during WWII at one point a bad price control decision resulted in no beef going east of chicago for some period of time. Provided the shortages shifted from place to place quickly enough they wouldn't encourage a black market.

The drugs could be sold in ABC stores or liquor stores, no need for new stores for recreational drugs. Buy from the government at the government's price, sell under price control. Not much incentive for big marketing efforts there.

Make it easy for jobless people to get drugs. Make it easy for them to get whatever rehabilitation we know how to do -- if they want it. Our job level has been stagnant for years, we have a lot of people we have no obvious use for. For gods sake let them have some fun and keep them out of the way, if that's what they want.

Go ahead and put as much social disapproval on drug use as you can manage. "It's legal but we don't have to like it." We need lots of disapproval on tobacco and alcohol, probably less for people who use caffeine or theobromine in moderation. Particularly when it's routine rote low-paying jobs that you can perform while stoned, employed people get to maintain a lot of disapproval for inappropriate drug use. People who are fey are likely to use drugs -- but without the drugs they'd do something else to destroy their lives.

Destroying the market would be a positive social good. The unregulated drug market is hurting our balance of payments along with the other problems people have mentioned.

There's the argument that there would be more druggees. I dunno. How many people would use drugs they don't now use, if they were somewhat more available and somewhat cheaper? Anybody can get them now, but some of us don't want to.

The argument that we should officially have zero-tolerance, while unofficially we do lots of corruption ... this is an argument for people who don't want results. "Sure, if we do it this way it creates a big disaster with a lot of misery. But we can then die and tell God that it wasn't our fault." I don't know how to handle that politically. We had Prohibition partly from that approach. When enough people saw it didn't work they quit. But it looks like we aren't as interested in results these days.

Here we go again... Could you please give some EVIDENCE that "the drug war" is targeting minorities before randomly race baiting? Yes, we all know that blacks get arrested on drug charges more than whites in proportion to their overall population. Arguendo, I'll even accept that drug useage is proportionally the same among both groups. You still can't logically draw the inference that there is a malicious intent behind those statistics.

As I told you in response to your email, those facts may have more to do with the high percentage of drug arrests that happen in big cities than anything else. Big cities tend to have higher incidences of all crimes, and they also tend to have larger minority populations. You could say that the police are going where the minorities are in order to look for crime, but without additional evidence you could also assume that minorities are simply committing more crimes. Each argument is a fallacy.

""Oh yeah... Regulated drug dealer???? And my conception of legalization is "silly?""

Bars in Amsterdam that sell weed are regulated drug dealers. Prostitutes in the red district are regulated whores. How is that silly? It's really, you dolt.

====

Yes, and the skills that illicit drug dealers possess don't translate very well to Amsterdam entrepreneurs, do they? That's my point. Somebody who knows how to steal and sell drugs illegally doesn't necessarily have the skills (or the resources) to open up shop. Besides, I don't think the thrust of this discussion is about pot anyhow. Moreover, legalization will remove much of their profit, and they won't be able to make the easy money they can today even if they decided to open up a legit drug operation.

"But there is no legal or public policy basis for these values. It's just, I guess, prejudice. There's no logic to it. I think Martha's point is that Palooka is being illogical and arbitrary"

There is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING arbitrary about that distinction.

AIDS victims are stricken with an illness which will KILL THEM. The medicine is the CURE or TREATMENT.

Addicts are stricken with an illness (addiction) which may kill them but only if they CONTINUE TO USE THE SOURCE of their sickness--drugs. Drugs are the PROBLEM, not the cure.

Got it: Drugs are good in one case (cure) and bad in another (cause of sickness). I can only think this is pure trolling because it is so apparent.

Prawal,

you must not be from one of the Indian states which sell marijuana and opium in government shops then?

I'm guessing you are from Andra Pradesh? There is still a religious right for sadhus to use marijuana throughout India no? and India would probably loosen restrictions on opium and marijuana if the U.S. released pressure.

Alcohol is certainly a problem in India, as is tobacco.

Public policy should address these questions rationally, but will it?

Good luck, Mr. Becker. We got close in '87 to a libertarian inspired decriminalization of mj in the U.S. congress. close. the tide is headed the other way right now.

The biggest issue is not the individual drug user or even those near and dear to the self-destructive but the erosion of civil society and the destabilization of nation states, and the drug war seems to be exacerbating those macro phenomena.

"Yes, and the skills that illicit drug dealers possess don't translate very well to Amsterdam entrepreneurs, do they?"

Actually, that isn't true. Latin American countries that have more experience with drug cartels have found that they act in a corporatist manner, which is why asset forfeiture laws work so effectively on them. I don't have the cites, but I will look for them and provide them later. It is true that skills necessary to run organized crime are the same as those to run legitimate business organizations. In fact, transborder/transnational criminal organizations have been found to organize themselves much like multinationals, and they avoid laws designed to interdict their smuggling routes much like multinationals seek to evade taxation. Some of the asset forfeiture provisions contained in the Patriot Act are premised on that assumption, actually, that organized crime (including terrorist cells) operate rationally much as coprorations do.

Palooka wrote: "There is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING arbitrary about that distinction. AIDS victims are stricken with an illness which will KILL THEM. The medicine is the CURE or TREATMENT. Addicts are stricken with an illness (addiction) which may kill them but only if they CONTINUE TO USE THE SOURCE of their sickness--drugs. Drugs are the PROBLEM, not the cure."

Okay. Not to step into this obviously contentious and quite personal spat, but although I don't like the Africans with AIDS analogy, I don't think Palooka adequately defends his position.

As far as it has been articulated, Africans could save their earnings and refrain from unprotected sex at a present cost to themselves. The benefit to them is future compound interest and reduced risk of AIDS infection. So, as Martha put it, we could refuse to send them drugs to encourage them to internalize the risk of bad sexual behavior and future medical health care. It sounds rather like a combination of Bush's health savings accounts (which presumably reduce moral hazard) and his African foreign aid package, which, controversially, I might add, promotes abstinence instead of sending over contraceptive devices.

In other words, on this theory the Africans are suffering from AIDS because of their "bad" behavior: not saving and sinful sex. If we want to reduce that bad behavior, we should not send them AIDS drugs.

That does sound (somewhat) similar to the argument Palooka is making: Drug addicts will engage in stealing and violence to get their drugs and feed their habit. The stealing and violence will increase if drugs are legalized. To reduce the "bad" behavior (the stealing and violence), we should not legalize drugs. In that way the arguments *are* analagous in the relevant way, which leads to the question: if reducing "bad" behavior is the only principle that guides us, then what is so wrong with depriving Africans of AIDS medication if it reduces "bad" behavior?

Indeed, as I stated above, this is an implicit assumption of President Bush's policies. So I am troubled by the fact that the analogy was made in the first place, but I am disappointed that Palooka had not really answered its, well, profundity. I don't think that was on purpose.

I think the reason for the disconnect between the two is that Martha (who has repeatedly stated that her grandfather, who may or may not have died at age 103, if she is telling the truth, was a drug addict) does not believe that using drugs per se is bad behavior, whereas Palooka does. Palooka appears to think that drug addicts are inherently "bad" people who deserve punishment (so it seems). Yet a background assumption of Becker's post, and the Pot Proponents (sorry, just amusing myself here) is that drug addicts are rational, social, normal individuals who just happen to enjoy using drugs more than other potential consumers. It seems like a disagreement about morals. To me, anyway. I'm not sure that economic theory can bridge that divide.

It's so TRUE that those who support the War on Drugs tend to favor stinginess when it comes to foreign aid!

"In that way the arguments *are* analagous in the relevant way, which leads to the question: if reducing "bad" behavior is the only principle that guides us, then what is so wrong with depriving Africans of AIDS medication if it reduces "bad" behavior?"

Every government program has unintended consquences which are "bad." So I guess every single goverment decision is "analogous." Heck, it's analogous just because it's a government decision. But that's just stupid, isn't it? It's a poor analogy without merit. Yes, someone can make the argument that you should leave countries suffering from AIDS on their own. But that has absolutely nothing to do with this debate anymore than any unrelated government action which produces unintended consequences. Hell, under these standards I could compare LEGALIZING drugs with withholding treatment for AIDS because both can be construed as having "bad" consequences on human behavior (unintended or not).

"Some of the asset forfeiture provisions contained in the Patriot Act are premised on that assumption, actually, that organized crime (including terrorist cells) operate rationally much as coprorations do."

I am talking about the common addict, not the head of a cartel, and not that organization as a whole. I know, you're going to say he's going to join up. I doubt it, and even if that were possible for a large percent of addicts (which it isn't), they would not be making the same money they did as drug dealers (legalization decreasing profits cheif among the reasons). And, again, I am not sure why I am even arguing on this point because Becker's proposal seems to assume that a large black market will not develop, so under Becker's rationale this isn't possible. The question stands--isn't he (or anyone who buys his rationale) worried about addicts stealing and engaging in violence to come up with the money more than they were before (because one of their main sources of revenue has been removed--illicit drug dealing). Does he support a goverment program to keep these addicts flush with drugs so they don't engage in criminal behavior?

Also, it is not feasible that engaging in the legal selling of drugs would yield anything close to what current drug dealers make. If getting a law-abiding job were enough (and sometimes it is) then we wouldn't see the problem of drug addicts resorting to criminal behavior to finance their habit, would we?

"It seems like a disagreement about morals. To me, anyway. I'm not sure that economic theory can bridge that divide."

Yes, I said as much earlier. I do not see this argument Becker has posited standing on its own, there are values behind it which he has not disclosed.

The morality, ultimately, comes down to how harmful drugs are to the mind, body, and spirit. Economic arguments can be made (reduced producticity, increased crime), however. Maybe Becker thinks drugs are largely benign, but I do not. I do believe it is the question which is really at issue, and even reaching a solution through an economic analysis would demand that such consideration be taken place (negative utility to the majority who disfavor drug use). Yet this is notably absent in Becker's proposal.

"It seems like a disagreement about morals. To me, anyway. I'm not sure that economic theory can bridge that divide."

Economic theory cannot.

Unless you assume that people choose what's good for them, how can you conclude that a free enterprise system promotes utility at all?

That assumption is at the heart of moral economic theory, and without it you are left with a peculiarly-abstract descriptive theory. And as the drug story shows, the assumption is wrong.

I very open to suggestions for change, but a legalization program, like Becker has proposed, will greatly increase consumption. That isn't fear-mongering, I have explained why I believe that, and I have engaged in debate with those who challenged it. I think it's pretty clear, especially in the longer term, that legalization will increase drug use.

Your point about sellers being involved in crime is well taken. That has some potential offsetting effects. Still, I think it is less applicable here then in countries like Columbia, where the cartels have enough power and autonomy that they can openly war against any who oppose them--including the government. Crime syndicates in the USA have an incentive to minimize unnecessary violence and crime, so they do not attract too much attention or leave too much evidence. I do not know which is greater in the USA, violent crime by users or by sellers. I would think users (just look at the data for violent crime under the use of intoxicants).

I also agree with your point that if use is legalized the person may be less likely to engage in unlawful activity. However, I think this effect is severely limited for highly addictive substances. Moreover, you may be overlooking the great variance in punishment for use versus distribution in the current situation which would suggest, under your theory, that addicts would be reluctant to take on selling to finance their habits even today. Again, I think the power of addiction makes "rational" thought a little harder reach.

So, I agree with a lot of the points you made, but still feel it is a definite possibility that crime may increase (even if diminished by some offsetting effects).

I think the burder of proof rests with those who presume the the laws of economics don't apply to drugs. I have said before and I will reitterate, that the debate is properly about whether or not the benefits of legalization outweigh the costs (increased drug use and all of its associated ills). Crossing your fingers and hoping time-tested economic principles just won't apply seems ill-advised. It's especially striking coming from Becker and Posner. If they are willing to allow increased drug consumption because the benefits of legalization in their estimation are great, then they should say so. But I do not get the impression Becker is ready to concede consumption would increase. That is my primary issue. And he refuses to engage the heart of the entire debate--whether decreasing drug consumption is a "good thing."

"It's especially striking coming from Becker and Posner."*

Strike Posner from that. His post was lucid and though I may disagree, I feel he has framed the debate in useful terms.

... Minus Posner's point about substitutes.

Palooka, you make some good points here. If drugs were legal the use might rise. And people who are often influenced by drugs may not act ractionally and certainly may not be rational while being influenced. (For that matter lots of people aren't particularly rational without drugs.)

About the first, here is a palliative that may help: When people are open about their drug use, there is more chance for third parties to observe the problems. When they get to watch people who abuse drugs looking stupid, unkempt, or dangerous they get the idea this isn't something they want to do. I admit this isn't working well for alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, and dextromorphan, but it will work *some* and the worse the effects the more it works.

Over time we'd develop a culture that could partly deal with it. I knew someone who told the following story: She used to smoke marijuana occasionally, and she went to live in france. After she'd been there a year or so the topic of marijuana came up and she said it wasn't so bad, it was kind of fun. But her french friends said it was for losers, it was something that only lower-class people did. One thing led to another and they went out to the arab quarter and bought some, and on a dare she and one other person tried it. After one puff they were utterly incapacitated. It was like somebody who was used to wine coolers taking a shot of 120 proof vodka laced with ether. They couldn't move, they couldn't think, and their friends were embarrassed for them.

What I particularly got from that story was the french students saying "Ganja is for losers". This is something that american drug propagandists have been trying to spread for thirty years here, and in france the students actually believed it. They also believed that getting pie-faced drunk was for losers.

We might easily get a society that has a consensus that incautious drug use is for losers. But then, what about the losers? Our society generates a lot of losers who know they'll be defeated in all their goals before they die. If they think drugs are a self-destructive thing to do, they'll do them. Unless we find some way not to make so many losers, what can we do with them beyond finding some way for them to kill themselves that won't be very disruptive?

A few years ago I met some kids in Memphis. They were about 5 years out of high school and didn't particularly have any prospects. All of them lived with their parents. Most of the girls had one child each which their parents kept when they went out to party. (They didn't believe in abortion, and were more careful after the first child.) The majority of the guys were unemployed. The one who introduced me to the others was working as an electrician at the base, supervising convict labor. One of them had joined the marines and would go to iraq after his training, several others did likewise later. In the meantime they partied. I listened. "Hey, when we were out last night I did Needle Turn at 85, where were you? You didn't do it. And then I did the jump at 90, and you didn't? Where were you? And when the police came I outran them, it got up to 120, where were you?" He sounded like people didn't really listen to him, and I listened carefully and said, "I think maybe he cares whether he lives or dies." The guy said, "Yeah! That's it exactly!"

The next morning we got word he was dead, he'd slammed his motorcycle straight into a stone wall. They said it couldn't have been an accident, he was a great driver. But he had taken a heavy tranquilizer. I felt responsible, I'd listened to him and maybe he wouldn't have had it so clear otherwise. The guy who sold him the drug felt responsible. The girl who'd had an argument with him felt responsible. The friend who'd gone off with a girl instead of staying with him felt responsible. Lots of drama. He left behind a wife and a 2-year-old child, he'd married her though she was living with her family until he could get a job that would pay for an apartment.

If it wasn't drugs it would be something else. Unless we can quit making people think they're losers they're going to act like losers.

"Again, why do you think crime rose during Prohibition of alcohol? As Dr. Miron illustrates, because lawmakers ignored the time-tested economic principle (and obvious common sense) that "prohibitions create black markets.""

Thats the root cause, the proximate cause is the insidious effect that prohibition has on ordinary law enforcement. People involved in the drug trade either directly or indirectly as associates or consumers are extreemly leery of the police. This creates a downward spiral of fear mistrust and prejudice that makes ordinary law enforcement almost impossible.

Fling,

Good points. The problem is you are making assumptions about positions I have never taken. THere are, of course, many costs to prohibition of drug use and the "War on Drugs" which is necessary to maintain deterrence and limit supply. I am sensitive to those costs and concerns, and the "right" answer is one which alludes me. As I said, I think there is great room for improvement, and I open to reform proposals.

But it seems Becker, and even yourself, treat the likely (in my view certain) increase in drug consumption too dismissively. If you conclude that the increase in drug use is acceptable after a cost-benefit analysis, well, then we disagree but I can respect that determination. That seems to be Posner's view on it. It's true that some of the resources from tax revenue (and from savings from enforcement) could go to demand reduction programs, but I don't see that fully tempering the forces which legalization would release.

oppss. alludes=eludes. :)

I think you are neglecting the possibility that one comes to a conclusion that prohibition is justified even if it leads to many problems.

Because, for reasons stated at length already, I think legalization is certain to cause an increase in drug use, I favor the status quo, even with its flaws.

It is interesting that Posner doesn't entertain this bizarre fantasy that consumption won't change (or the stranger fiction that it will decrease), but still justifies his position on legalization. That strikes me as a reasonable position. I've said what I am going to say, and so have you. Ciao.

fling93: But even if your wish comes true, I think your feared increase in drug usage would be far outweighed by a certain and significant decline in homicides. But I guess you disagree, preferring death over drugs.

Palooka: ...prohibition is justified even if it leads to many problems.

Well, it looks like my guess was right.

It's certainly interesting that many posts assume that legalization means that there would be no attempt by other means to solve problems created by drug abuse as opposed to drug use. I drink beer occasionally. Sometimes if I'm not driving I might consume more than I would if I had to get behind the wheel of a car. Does that make me an alcoholic? No. But the assumption of those promoting the status quo is that any use of any drug that is currently illegal automatically equates to drug abuse and addiction. If in fact we legalized drugs and then took an approach towards any problems of treating them as public health and economic issues we'd probably get further and use fewer economic resources in the attempt. The flaws in the reasoning of those defending the current system are put on display by a post claiming that in a country of fewer than 300,000,000 people legalizing drugs would result in fully one-third of them suddenly going out and becoming users. Does someone who posts something so over the top even realize how ridiculous it sounds?

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I nave no any words to add.
Look at this:
Certain states and US Congress are rushing to severely restrict sales of common cold medicined containing pseudoephedrine, which can be used illegaly to produce the highly addictive drug methamphetamine. They are passing laws that put these products behind the pharmacy counter with little regard for the impact on consumers and retailers.
These restrictions mean that retailers without pharmacies can no longer sell up to 250 medicines that consumers need to treat a wide range of ailments. These are no pharmacies in more than 70% of the nation's supermarkets and none none in the nearly 130,000 convenience stores.
But everybody knows, that this can not change anything. 80% of meth manufacturing is concentrated in a big laborotories and they are not buying raw materials in WAWA or 7/11 convenience store.

I recently saw the movie "Traffic" and was wondering what others thought about how well the movie represents actual social/political policy regarding drugs, family dymanics, and models of addiction??

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