during prohibition
when I was a teenager
A prohibition was repealed in 1933 when I was 21-years-old, so I was a teenager during most of prohibition
Alcohol was readily available
Bootlegging was common, any idea that alcohol prohibition was keeping people from drinking was absurd
There were speakeasies all over the place but more than that
We had this spectacle of Al Capone, of the hijackings, of the Gang wars;
Anybody with two eyes to see could see that this was a bad deal. That you were doing more harm than good.
Now, in addition, I became an economist and as an economist I
came to recognize the importance of markets and the free choice and of consumer sovereignty
and
came to discover
the harm that was done when you interfered with it.
The effect of criminalization, of making drugs criminal, is to drive people
from mild drugs to strong drugs.
In what way?
Well you make take, Marijuana.
Marijuana is a very heavy bulky substance and therefore it's relatively easy to interdict
The warriors on drugs have been more successful
Interdicting marijuana than let's say cocaine so marijuana prices have gone up
they become harder to get. There's been an incentive to grow more potent marijuana and
People have been driven from marijuana to heroin, or cocaine, or crack or one of the other drugs.
Let us consider another drug then, and that is the drug crack, crack cocaine.
Crack would never have existed
In my opinion if you had not had drug prohibition
It was drug prohibition
Why was crack created? Because cocaine was so expensive
I see America with half the number of prisons half the number of prisoners
10,000 fewer homicides a year inner cities in which there's a chance
For these poor people to live without being afraid for their lives
Respectable citizens - or, citizens who might be respectable who are now addicts?
not being subject to becoming criminals in order to get their drug, being able to
Get drugs for which they're sure of the quality
The role of the government is to protect the drug Cartel
That's literally true. [if] they're doing a good job with it excellent. What [do] I mean by that in an ordinary free-Market business?
Let's take potatoes
Defended anyone there are thousands of importers and exporters
Anybody can go into the business
But the drug but but it's very hard for a small person to go into the drug importing business because our interdiction efforts
Essentially make an enormous lacrosse line, so the only people who can survive in that business are these large
Medellin Cartel kind of people we'll have enough money so they can reflect some airplane, so they can have sophisticated methods
So it's in effect in addition to it by Keeping [goods] out
By and by arresting let's say local marijuana growers the government keeps the price of these products on
So what more could a Monopolist [walk]?
The one negative feature of legalizing drugs. Is that there might be some additional?
drug addicts
However, I want to qualify that and still another
the [Child] was shot in a slum [enou] in a
Pass by shooting in Random shooting is an innocent victim in every respect of the time
The person who decides to take drugs for himself was not an innocent victim he has chosen himself to be [able]
And I must say I have very much less sympathy for him
Let us tell the willing I am not willing to impose. I do not think it is more
to impose heavy costs on other people to
protect people from Their own choices
[is] it not true that the entire discussion here the entire drug problem is an economic problem till now it's not an economic profit
Or tomorrow problem in what way the economics part of it is I'm an economist, but the economics problem is strictly
Tertiary it's a Moral problem
It's a problem with a harm which government is doing
look, I have estimated statistically that the
prohibition of drugs
produces on the average
10,000 additional homicides a year it's a moral problem that the government is going around killing 10,000 people. It's a moral problem
That the government is making into criminals
people who
May be doing something you and I don't approve of but who are doing something that hurts nobody else
most of the arrests for drugs
Are for possession by casual users now here's somebody who wants [to] smoke a cigarette Mara
Joint
If he's caught he goes to jail
Now is that Moral is that proper? I think it's absolutely disgraceful
that our government's supposed to be our government should be in the position of
Converting people who are not harming others?
Into criminals of destroying their life putting them in jail. [I] don't see that's the issue to me
Look if you're right
the case for prohibiting [our]
Drugs is exactly in straw as strong and as weak. There's a case for prohibiting people from overeating
We all know that overeating causes more deaths than than drugs
Why can't why why isn't it perfect if it's if it's if it's in principle?
Okay for the government [to] say you must not
consume drugs because there do you want why isn't it [alright] to say you must not eat too much because
Why isn't it [alright] to say you must not try to go in for skydiving because you're likely to die
Why isn't it alright to say all skiing? That's no good. That's a very dangerous sport, you'll hurt yourself
Where do you draw [the] line?
what scares you the [most] about the notion of drugs being legal as
Nothing like here's me about the notion of drugs being legal nothing. What scares me?
Is the notion of continuing on the past path were on now?
Which will destroy our free society?
you
