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The reason you don't legalize drugs is because you don't want the kind of people who engage in major drug trafficking to suddenly be granted access to legitimat
by slavboj 4y ago
The reason you don't legalize drugs is because you don't want the kind of people who engage in major drug trafficking to suddenly be granted access to legitimate political and economic power.
- colordrops 4y agoCan you expound? I don't understand your point.
- andrewmcwatters 4y agoWhen you legalize harmful substances, you create commercial opportunities for them to be sold, which gives malicious actors unbalanced power to sway political agents in their favor. Once a power dynamic emerges, it becomes difficult to undo it until it is too late, and individuals become statistics to be used as evidence for repealing legislation that made such a power dynamic possible.
- amflare 4y agoThink of the influence that Pharma or Oil or Tech have in the US. Now imagine that the sorts of people who (while it is illegal, mind you) choose to be in the drug trade joined this cohort.
- mrguyorama 4y agoThey won't join the cohort, because the cohort doesn't want them, and will just buy a fledgling business in the market instead, like Tobacco companies buying juul. It's laughable that people think you can just "join" the elite, like if you have enough money.
- amatic 4y agoShouldn't the reverse happen? Marijuana trade was a big chunk of Mexican cartel money. Now when it is grown legally in most of US and Canada, the cartels are losing money. The illegality of drugs is keeping the drug gangs in power, because the high price and huge markets are giving them huge profits.
- amflare 4y agoThis is probably the best argument I've heard against the legalization of drugs.
- thecrash 4y agoI think it misunderstands the nature of illegal cartels. Although their business does involve agriculture, logistics and marketing, those are not a cartel's core business competencies. The core competencies are around smuggling, bribery, extralegal violence, clandestine operations, etc. Dominance in their core competencies allows them to run mediocre-to-bad agriculture and logistics operations at a huge profit, because any potential market competition in those sectors is suppressed by the law. The only ones who could meaningfully compete with a cartel at coca-growing are another cartel. If the law stops suppressing competitors (and instead starts protecting them), organizations which are good at bribery and violence no longer have an edge.
- tomjen3 4y agoWe could make it illegal for people to sell it if they have previously been associated with the drug trade. Instead it would be sold in Walmarts Pharmacies, and they would make 10% just like they do with much else they sell.