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If drugs were legal to produce and distribute then it wouldn't be a black market and thus violence and criminality would reduce (people wouldn't buy from shady

If drugs were legal to produce and distribute then it wouldn't be a black market and thus violence and criminality would reduce (people wouldn't buy from shady characters; they'd just go to the store and buy it like anything else). I don't know any ricelords or any significant criminal gangs that distribute rice. This is only a problem encountered with drugs and other illegal things. Also, (paraphrasing Milton Friedman), drug users don't report the crime unlike other crimes like burglary or murder because the victim is the offender.

mjolk 10y ago
> If drugs were legal to produce and distribute then it wouldn't be a black market and thus violence and criminality would reduce (people wouldn't buy from shady characters; they'd just go to the store and buy it like anything else). Criminality _related to the import/export/sale of the drugs_. If you think this would be without side effects, you haven't spent much time in an area with methheads or heroin addicts. And, for what it's worth, it's very easy to purchase drugs from non-shady characters, especially in major US cities (a friend of mine used to text his dealer and a business-casual dressed woman would show up with a wheeling briefcase). > I don't know any ricelords or any significant criminal gangs that distribute rice. This is only a problem encountered with drugs and other illegal things. If you use the semantics of "criminal gangs", then you've framed the argument in a way that makes it impossible to debate. Of course "criminal gangs" do "illegal things" (prostitution, substances, etc), that's why they're called criminal gangs. In a country with a stronger rule of law, they're forced to at least have a front, such as sanitation, pay day loans, unions, etc. > Also, (paraphrasing Milton Friedman), drug users don't report the crime unlike other crimes like burglary or murder because the victim is the offender. Eh, for casual, functional users. The water gets murky when the users subsist on government services or become unemployed due to substance abuse. The case against legalizing all drugs isn't particularly concerned about a bank teller taking psilocybin mushrooms and sitting in her back yard on a Sunday afternoon.

mjolk 10y ago

> If drugs were legal to produce and distribute then it wouldn't be a black market and thus violence and criminality would reduce (people wouldn't buy from shady characters; they'd just go to the store and buy it like anything else). Criminality _related to the import/export/sale of the drugs_. If you think this would be without side effects, you haven't spent much time in an area with methheads or heroin addicts. And, for what it's worth, it's very easy to purchase drugs from non-shady characters, especially in major US cities (a friend of mine used to text his dealer and a business-casual dressed woman would show up with a wheeling briefcase). > I don't know any ricelords or any significant criminal gangs that distribute rice. This is only a problem encountered with drugs and other illegal things. If you use the semantics of "criminal gangs", then you've framed the argument in a way that makes it impossible to debate. Of course "criminal gangs" do "illegal things" (prostitution, substances, etc), that's why they're called criminal gangs. In a country with a stronger rule of law, they're forced to at least have a front, such as sanitation, pay day loans, unions, etc. > Also, (paraphrasing Milton Friedman), drug users don't report the crime unlike other crimes like burglary or murder because the victim is the offender. Eh, for casual, functional users. The water gets murky when the users subsist on government services or become unemployed due to substance abuse. The case against legalizing all drugs isn't particularly concerned about a bank teller taking psilocybin mushrooms and sitting in her back yard on a Sunday afternoon.