4 ms·

Destroying drug cartels, the practical way: legalize.

eagsalazar2 14y ago
The idea that cracking down harder is going to work is just a complete fantasy. It will just mean that the supply side becomes even more violent, aggressive, and smart.
hooande 14y ago
I don't understand the economic argument for legalization. It will turn the price of drugs into price + taxes. The current complex distribution and supply network doesn't have to pay taxes because they are already illegal, so they'll continue to charge the current price. The average addict will want drugs as cheaply as possible and would probably prefer to buy from someone in their neighborhood as opposed to a pharmacy. In the case of mexican cartels specifically, I think there is more to it than just drug sales. They control large areas of mexico, entire towns. They're providing services of security and dispute resolution that the government can't or won't because the areas are too poor. Whenever a large portion of a country is ceded to a criminal group (like sicily used to be) unwinding the problem is more complicated than deincentivizing drug sales.
- spindritf 14y ago
  > It will turn the price of drugs into price + taxes The price of avoiding authorities, not being able to openly use legitimate financing, or other facilities (transportation, storage, distribution chains), and constricted pool of talented employees is very high and currently included in the price. Also, many potential customers are not being served currently because they're not willing to engage in highly illegal transactions. Even with fairly high taxes, regular corporations would easily be able to deliver product of higher quality and generally better experience not necessarily more expensively. Just like they do with alcohol, tobacco, or chocolate.
- jseliger 14y ago
  >The current complex distribution and supply network doesn't have to pay taxes because they are already illegal, so they'll continue to charge the current price This is highly unlikely. It's MUCH cheaper to obey the law than not; as I said in another comment, you may notice that, after the U.S. ended alcohol prohibition, almost no one sold alcohol illegally because it wasn't worth it. Daniel Okrent's book Last Call is pretty good on this subject.
- rogerbinns 14y ago
  The illegality also has other problems. For example one is getting justice - you can't take people to court when deals go wrong, the product is adulterated, you were paid with fake money etc. That pretty much leaves violence as an alternative to the legal system. Another is that it makes treatment and getting off drugs harder because you can't be open about an addiction for fear of losing a job, health care or similar things.
- bunderbunder 14y ago
  > It will turn the price of drugs into price + taxes. The current complex distribution and supply network doesn't have to pay taxes because they are already illegal, so they'll continue to charge the current price. Under the current scheme, the street price of drugs represents price + cost of maintaining a standing army + maintenance of baroque, multi-tier, low-capacity, high-overhead supply chain + "hazard pay" level wages for everyone involved in the enterprise. So just focusing on taxes gives an unrealistic view of the situation. No, they're not paying taxes, but they're paying for scads and scads of other things, and have to pass that cost on to the consumer. This is pure deadweight loss, just as taxes would be. But it's also a relatively enormous loss; it would be very easy to come up with a tax rate that fits in below it. I suspect that anything less than four digits should do the trick, which means that we could even set the rate many times higher than the current rate for cigarettes and be fine. And the market will not support operating an illegal network that's more expensive than the costs imposed by taxation. Take tobacco: organized crime is absolutely still involved in tobacco smuggling. And with excise taxes on cigarettes in the US averaging over 100%, that shouldn't be surprising. But at the same time, it doesn't seem to be supporting organized crime and associated social costs on anything near the scale we've seen with groups like the Zetas or al-Qaeda.
spindritf 14y ago
I don't think there's a first world government that would survive legalisation of cocaine or heroin. It's not going to happen any time soon.
- riffraff 14y ago
  Not legalization, but portugal seem to have had some massive success on all fronts by decriminalizing all kind of drugs. This was, for me, a somewhat surprising result, so maybe it's worth keeping an open mind about what would happen with full legalization of everything.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
batgaijin 14y ago
Or better yet: why don't we treat drugpins like terrorists? I mean seriously, why don't we just start lumping them under terrorists? Despite what I think of drugs (they aren't all that bad, do what you want in your own home) I seriously don't understand why we refuse to label them like this if it would mean more funding, more attention and better information sharing between departments.
- Nursie 14y ago
  Yup, lets just label every type of heinous crime as terrorism, and then we can focus our crime-fighting efforts on the whole range of criminal activities! More seriously, in some places they already are labelled this way because they are effectively terrorists, shadow governments, militias etc, so there are already full-fledged military efforts to bring them down in some countries. Doesn't really work.

The idea that cracking down harder is going to work is just a complete fantasy. It will just mean that the supply side becomes even more violent, aggressive, and smart.

hooande 14y ago

I don't understand the economic argument for legalization. It will turn the price of drugs into price + taxes. The current complex distribution and supply network doesn't have to pay taxes because they are already illegal, so they'll continue to charge the current price. The average addict will want drugs as cheaply as possible and would probably prefer to buy from someone in their neighborhood as opposed to a pharmacy. In the case of mexican cartels specifically, I think there is more to it than just drug sales. They control large areas of mexico, entire towns. They're providing services of security and dispute resolution that the government can't or won't because the areas are too poor. Whenever a large portion of a country is ceded to a criminal group (like sicily used to be) unwinding the problem is more complicated than deincentivizing drug sales.

spindritf 14y ago
> It will turn the price of drugs into price + taxes The price of avoiding authorities, not being able to openly use legitimate financing, or other facilities (transportation, storage, distribution chains), and constricted pool of talented employees is very high and currently included in the price. Also, many potential customers are not being served currently because they're not willing to engage in highly illegal transactions. Even with fairly high taxes, regular corporations would easily be able to deliver product of higher quality and generally better experience not necessarily more expensively. Just like they do with alcohol, tobacco, or chocolate.
jseliger 14y ago
>The current complex distribution and supply network doesn't have to pay taxes because they are already illegal, so they'll continue to charge the current price This is highly unlikely. It's MUCH cheaper to obey the law than not; as I said in another comment, you may notice that, after the U.S. ended alcohol prohibition, almost no one sold alcohol illegally because it wasn't worth it. Daniel Okrent's book Last Call is pretty good on this subject.
rogerbinns 14y ago
The illegality also has other problems. For example one is getting justice - you can't take people to court when deals go wrong, the product is adulterated, you were paid with fake money etc. That pretty much leaves violence as an alternative to the legal system. Another is that it makes treatment and getting off drugs harder because you can't be open about an addiction for fear of losing a job, health care or similar things.
bunderbunder 14y ago
> It will turn the price of drugs into price + taxes. The current complex distribution and supply network doesn't have to pay taxes because they are already illegal, so they'll continue to charge the current price. Under the current scheme, the street price of drugs represents price + cost of maintaining a standing army + maintenance of baroque, multi-tier, low-capacity, high-overhead supply chain + "hazard pay" level wages for everyone involved in the enterprise. So just focusing on taxes gives an unrealistic view of the situation. No, they're not paying taxes, but they're paying for scads and scads of other things, and have to pass that cost on to the consumer. This is pure deadweight loss, just as taxes would be. But it's also a relatively enormous loss; it would be very easy to come up with a tax rate that fits in below it. I suspect that anything less than four digits should do the trick, which means that we could even set the rate many times higher than the current rate for cigarettes and be fine. And the market will not support operating an illegal network that's more expensive than the costs imposed by taxation. Take tobacco: organized crime is absolutely still involved in tobacco smuggling. And with excise taxes on cigarettes in the US averaging over 100%, that shouldn't be surprising. But at the same time, it doesn't seem to be supporting organized crime and associated social costs on anything near the scale we've seen with groups like the Zetas or al-Qaeda.

spindritf 14y ago

I don't think there's a first world government that would survive legalisation of cocaine or heroin. It's not going to happen any time soon.

riffraff 14y ago
Not legalization, but portugal seem to have had some massive success on all fronts by decriminalizing all kind of drugs. This was, for me, a somewhat surprising result, so maybe it's worth keeping an open mind about what would happen with full legalization of everything.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]

batgaijin 14y ago

Or better yet: why don't we treat drugpins like terrorists? I mean seriously, why don't we just start lumping them under terrorists? Despite what I think of drugs (they aren't all that bad, do what you want in your own home) I seriously don't understand why we refuse to label them like this if it would mean more funding, more attention and better information sharing between departments.

Nursie 14y ago
Yup, lets just label every type of heinous crime as terrorism, and then we can focus our crime-fighting efforts on the whole range of criminal activities! More seriously, in some places they already are labelled this way because they are effectively terrorists, shadow governments, militias etc, so there are already full-fledged military efforts to bring them down in some countries. Doesn't really work.