6 ms·

Legalizing drugs cuts crime in two ways. Directly, by reclassifying a bunch of formerly criminal drug users as just drug users. But also indirectly: it makes th

by seldo 13y ago

Legalizing drugs cuts crime in two ways. Directly, by reclassifying a bunch of formerly criminal drug users as just drug users. But also indirectly: it makes them cheap, which makes them unattractive targets for organized crime. If western politicians could just get over their taboos about drug use and let idiots stuff themselves with whatever drugs they like, not just nicotine and alcohol, we would make the US richer and safer. And this isn't a hypothetical: more than 12 years ago, Portugal decriminalized possession of all drugs -- from marijuana to heroin -- and plowed the money saved by no longer jailing addicts into treating them. The result has been lower rates of addiction and HIV infection, and higher rates of treatment: http://www.alternet.org/story/151635/ten_years_ago_portugal_legalized_all_drugs_--_what_happened_next http://www.alternet.org/story/151635/ten_years_ago_portugal_... Now possession is a misdemeanor, like a traffic violation, punishable by a fine or community service, and accompanied by a screening for risk factors of addiction, with encouragement to enter treatment programs: http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/evaluating-drug-decriminalization-in-portugal-12-years-later-a-891060.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/evaluating-drug-d... It hasn't been a magic bullet, but nor has it been a disaster. And what is a disaster is the current policy: drug money fuels endless violence and murder inside the US and across central and southern America. The social fabric of my home country (Trinidad & Tobago) is being torn apart by violence from drug trafficking, and there's nothing we can do about it as long as the amount of money to be made by risking the drug trade is so enormous. We can't lower the price, because we are not the market: the US is. I wish more people in the US were aware that their paying $100/gram for the occasional fun evening is paying for murder on the streets of my home town. And I wish more people realized they don't have to stop taking cocaine; they just have to lower the damn price.

temp9251 13y ago
Is there any hard proof that marijuana prices have been affected by the availability of medical marijuana? Further north they certainly haven't (medical marijuana sells for more), and the same people end up distributing both kinds to consumers. Taking a quick look at crowdsourced prices, weed in CA looks to be about $200/oz, which is not very cheap. edit: $100 a gram.... what?! Are you talking about cocaine?
- seldo 13y ago
  "$100/gram" was just a random number; I have absolutely no idea what any drugs cost. But yes, I was referring to cocaine, which is the one that causes the most trouble for my country. You guys grow your own weed.
- h4pless 13y ago
  $200/oz is hard proof that medical marijuana(MMJ) has driven down prices. I live in Colorado and used to be friends with the proprietor of an MMJ dispensay and he used to buy it for $4000 a pound or $250 an ounce and that was their per pound wholesale price. It was common when the MMJ businesses were starting up in CO for dispensaries to sell for ~$400 an ounce and grams at $20 which I believe was mostly comparable with street prices. The prices were driven down as more and more dispensaries entered the market and the competition became more fierce as a result of the market saturation to the point where they were advertising sub-$10 grams and sub-$200 ounces. That $200/oz price may not be cheap to you, but it is half of what it used to cost and less than half of what these hippies can make selling it in New York.
  - rdl 13y ago
    Northern California wholesale prices are more in the $600-1500/pound range now. It used to be...$2500-3500/pound about 10 years ago.
rogerbinns 13y ago
You missed a third way, and possibly the most important. When something goes wrong in an illegal activity, the justice/legal system can't be used to address the situation. For example if someone gets shortchanged, fails to pay, or supplies product of a different quality than expected. Having to get justice outside of the legal system is a driver behind violence and other additional illegal acts.
- jusben1369 13y ago
  I wonder if the "third way" here isn't more "by dropping prices and making drugs more affordable many drug users are less likely to engage in petty crimes to raise money to pay for their habits" EDIT: Should probably emphasize "addicts" to differentiate from recreational users.
  - rogerbinns 13y ago
    What I wrote about isn't just the end users, or them committing crimes. But even as an end user, if your dealer shortchanges you or gives you counterfeit currency, or even whacks you over the head, you have no real recourse via the legal system. You'd have to take matters into your own hands. Similarly if the dealer has things like that happen to them, or even "contract" violations with their supplier, they too have to take matters into their own hands.
sneak 13y ago
Better question: why does the US so frequently think the right answer to a problem is the completely unworkable, unwinnable, wasteful one? Examples include the war on drugs, the war on terror, and domestic "security" theater (TSA).
- seiji 13y ago
  The cynical answer is corruption. Military–industrial complex, etc.
  - riggins 13y ago
    Military–industrial complex, etc. this is off-topic, but did you see that article in Businessweek about the bomb detector. http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-07-11/in-iraq-the-bomb-detecting-device-that-didnt-work-except-to-make-money http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-07-11/in-iraq-the-... Ok, that's pretty obviously a fraud. But what it made me start thinking is if you can take an empty plastic handle and a radio antennae and sell millions of dollars of them ... there must be a ton of stuff that doesn't really do what its supposed to but people buy anyway.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - atondwal 13y ago
      > there must be a ton of stuff that doesn't really do what its supposed to but people buy anyway. This is one of the reasons I make sure I know how everything I own works. That, and the good ol' hacker ethic.
  - baddox 13y ago
    More obvious than cynical.
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  Why do you think this is unique to the US? There are reactionaries everywhere, and in most* places they hold much greater sway than in the US. * Edit: well 'most' is highly subjective, but I hope we can agree on 'many.'
JonFish85 13y ago
"If western politicians could just get over their taboos about drug use and let idiots stuff themselves with whatever drugs they like, not just nicotine and alcohol, we would make the US richer and safer." Seriously? I'm not sure if you're saying to legalize all drugs, but that's how I'm interpreting this.... Legalizing addictive drugs will make us safer & richer? I feel like if we legalized heroin, we'd have junkies all over the place running around stealing whatever isn't bolted down just to get the next high. It affects far more than just the user, it affects the families, the kids, the neighborhood, the town, etc. Even if we taxed it, those taxes would likely go right back into having more security: police officers, hospitals, etc. Sure pot might be more or less harmless, but letting people stuff themselves with any drug of choice seems very wrong. There are some drugs that I think should absolutely be restricted very tightly.
- pessimizer 13y ago
  A dose of heroin costs a nickel. You don't have to steal very much to accumulate a nickel. The reason that junkies are thieves are the prices caused by prohibition.
- seiji 13y ago
  Legalizing alcohol will make us safer & richer? I feel like if we legalized alcohol, we'd have drunks all over the place abusing their partners and killing people with intoxicated driving.
- pstuart 13y ago
  Right now "legalized heroin" is killing lots of people: http://www.tampabay.com/news/nation/drug-overdose-deaths-up-for-11th-consecutive-year/1275855 http://www.tampabay.com/news/nation/drug-overdose-deaths-up-... Making it illegal doesn't stop those who will use it. It didn't stop my brother, who ended up dying from a heroin overdose. But legal alcohol was always available and my mother was able to drink herself to death. Legally. So let me call the cops on you for having beer in your house and kick in your doors and kill your dog and hall your ass off to jail for your protection. Ugh. Keep your fucking nanny state to yourself.
- seldo 13y ago
baddox 13y ago
> If western politicians could just get over their taboos about drug use This is a bit naive. I don't think taboos are responsible for drug prohibition. I think it's the economic interests of industries which benefit from drug prohibition, like police, prisons, alcohol, and pharmaceuticals.
- dasil003 13y ago
  You didn't deserve to be downvoted for this comment. The taboos may keep these things in place, but we have to ask how the taboos got their in the first place. In the case of cannabis it was largely as a result of DuPont being unable to compete with industrial hemp, and leverage a little racist fear-mongering by borrowing the Mexican term marijuana to make it appear extra dangerous. Take a look at the film Reefer Madness from the 30s to see the ridiculous propaganda that they were feeding to the public.
  - atondwal 13y ago
    I think you got the original causes right on, but I don't think it's taboos that keep them in place; I think it's a jobs thing (for cops and DEA agents).
    - dasil003 13y ago
      That's where the lobbying comes from, taboos are where the political capital comes from.
- jusben1369 13y ago
  I suspect the police force would dislike being put in this category. But in general, I can't really agree with you. It's hard to deny that in Western culture there have been moral/religious taboos around drug use for centuries. People act strangely on drugs and that quite frankly scares the heck out of many people. Once laws are in place all sorts of unintended consequences occur around beneficiaries (ie Hippies!) but the root cause is this long running taboo around drug use. That's why this is so powerful to me.
derleth 13y ago
I want to know if Portuguese emergency rooms (and hospitals in general) are having to deal with more drug addicts and drug-related acute health problems (overdoses are only one variety) and drug-related complications to existing health problems. Everyone knows about overdoses. But if you take opioids to the point you become physically dependent and then you need surgery, the anesthesia provider has to work around a body with a different (narrower!) dose-response curve to anesthetics: Normal people have a broad range of doses which provide pain control but don't kill them. A long-term addict has a very narrow range between "Not feeling it" and "Heart just stopped." That's just one example. I'm sure there are others. How are Portuguese healthcare providers dealing with this?
- samatman 13y ago
  Better than they were when there were strong legal reasons not to disclose one's status as a junkie, I dare say.
codex 13y ago
While I agree with your points, I wonder if legalization temporarily boosts other types of crime, as former "criminals" seek other forms of easy money to maintain their lifestyle and social status. Drug dealing is a form of gainful employment for many who have few other skills.
- hadem 13y ago
  So we should keep these drugs illegal so we can ensure that drug dealers have "jobs"...?
- adventured 13y ago
  American prohibition covered that ground. There's a short spasm by organized crime as they fight to stay alive, and then the system goes into cardiac arrest. Ideally you have a government that simultaneously hammers organized crime at the same time their funding is drying up.
- tomjen3 13y ago
  I have heard this argument a lot and I don't buy it, because if there were some other thing they could do to make more money easier than drugs why not do that now? I mean it is not like they couldn't stop trading drugs today if that is what they wanted.
  - codex 13y ago
    Oh, I don't think other forms of crime would be easier; just that other forms of crime may be the next easiest thing to try.
    - tomjen3 13y ago
      Sure but in that case the value of the crime goes down (either because it doesn't make so much money or because it is harder or more dangerous) in which case (law of supply and demand) the supply of criminals goes down too. And which crimes should they go for? Guns aren't needed when you don't need to defend a territory. Smuggling would be an obvious next step, but what should they smuggle? Diamants? Counterfeit goods? Women? All those are much more difficult to smuggle than drugs and the price per kilo is much, much less so they would have to invent new ways of smuggling. At present drug prizes it makes sense to build one way semi-submercibles (or even submarines) to get the stuff from Columbia to the US, I doubt the risk is worth it if you are to smuggle counterfeit goods at a few dollars a pound.
adventured 13y ago
Another way it cuts crime dramatically: it neuters the drug cartels by removing at least half their market (plausibly a lot more, as their infrastructure including manufacturing would be eroded). That didn't seem to fall into your two examples. At least 60,000 people were murdered by organized crime just in Felipe Calderon's six year term. One more way: by legalizing and taxing it, there properly should be more money available for treatment, helping to eliminate dangerous lifestyles that often cross over into crime.
ignostic 13y ago
There may be something that the United States can do to help your country in this area, but there are also things that your country can do to help itself. Why have your lawmakers decriminalized or legalized the growth and distribution of these controlled substances? Supply and demand. Your response only tackles half of the problem - demand - while ignoring the half that hits closer to your home.
InclinedPlane 13y ago
There are so many more direct and higher order effects of drug prohibition, just in regards to crime. 1: It gives easy revenue for criminals. 2: It puts many people into the "criminal" category, making them much less willing to interact with law enforcement and making it more likely that they will be willing to consort with true criminals. 3: It takes away resources from the criminal justice system, and further perverts it as well. It breeds the sort of police officer who is unskilled at forming a bond with the community they serve and with basic policework and instead focuses on making drug busts. It also breeds the sort of "assumed guilty" plea bargain dominated prosecutor model. 4: As a consequence of 1 and 2, the cognitive dissonance of the law banning victimless drug use causes many police officers to lose their respect for the law as well. And because of the wealth of criminal drug dealing enterprises there becomes a natural synergy which promotes police corruption. 5: Similarly, due to drug forfeiture laws it becomes possible for the way that police undertake law enforcement activities to dramatically affect their own budgets and resources. Naturally police organizations tend to be drawn to the activities which provide the most revenue, drug busts, to the detriment of other policing. 6: Because of the drug/criminal connection combined with rampant police crack downs due to the above factors drug busts can often be dangerous, which pushes police officers even farther away from a healthy relationship with their communities and increasingly toward a militarized relationship which spills over into every citizen/police interaction and further poisons the relationship.

by seldo 13y ago

temp9251 13y ago

Is there any hard proof that marijuana prices have been affected by the availability of medical marijuana? Further north they certainly haven't (medical marijuana sells for more), and the same people end up distributing both kinds to consumers. Taking a quick look at crowdsourced prices, weed in CA looks to be about $200/oz, which is not very cheap. edit: $100 a gram.... what?! Are you talking about cocaine?

seldo 13y ago
"$100/gram" was just a random number; I have absolutely no idea what any drugs cost. But yes, I was referring to cocaine, which is the one that causes the most trouble for my country. You guys grow your own weed.
h4pless 13y ago
$200/oz is hard proof that medical marijuana(MMJ) has driven down prices. I live in Colorado and used to be friends with the proprietor of an MMJ dispensay and he used to buy it for $4000 a pound or $250 an ounce and that was their per pound wholesale price. It was common when the MMJ businesses were starting up in CO for dispensaries to sell for ~$400 an ounce and grams at $20 which I believe was mostly comparable with street prices. The prices were driven down as more and more dispensaries entered the market and the competition became more fierce as a result of the market saturation to the point where they were advertising sub-$10 grams and sub-$200 ounces. That $200/oz price may not be cheap to you, but it is half of what it used to cost and less than half of what these hippies can make selling it in New York.
- rdl 13y ago
  Northern California wholesale prices are more in the $600-1500/pound range now. It used to be...$2500-3500/pound about 10 years ago.

rogerbinns 13y ago

You missed a third way, and possibly the most important. When something goes wrong in an illegal activity, the justice/legal system can't be used to address the situation. For example if someone gets shortchanged, fails to pay, or supplies product of a different quality than expected. Having to get justice outside of the legal system is a driver behind violence and other additional illegal acts.

jusben1369 13y ago
I wonder if the "third way" here isn't more "by dropping prices and making drugs more affordable many drug users are less likely to engage in petty crimes to raise money to pay for their habits" EDIT: Should probably emphasize "addicts" to differentiate from recreational users.
- rogerbinns 13y ago
  What I wrote about isn't just the end users, or them committing crimes. But even as an end user, if your dealer shortchanges you or gives you counterfeit currency, or even whacks you over the head, you have no real recourse via the legal system. You'd have to take matters into your own hands. Similarly if the dealer has things like that happen to them, or even "contract" violations with their supplier, they too have to take matters into their own hands.

sneak 13y ago

Better question: why does the US so frequently think the right answer to a problem is the completely unworkable, unwinnable, wasteful one? Examples include the war on drugs, the war on terror, and domestic "security" theater (TSA).

seiji 13y ago
The cynical answer is corruption. Military–industrial complex, etc.
- riggins 13y ago
  Military–industrial complex, etc. this is off-topic, but did you see that article in Businessweek about the bomb detector. http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-07-11/in-iraq-the-bomb-detecting-device-that-didnt-work-except-to-make-money http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-07-11/in-iraq-the-... Ok, that's pretty obviously a fraud. But what it made me start thinking is if you can take an empty plastic handle and a radio antennae and sell millions of dollars of them ... there must be a ton of stuff that doesn't really do what its supposed to but people buy anyway.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - atondwal 13y ago
    > there must be a ton of stuff that doesn't really do what its supposed to but people buy anyway. This is one of the reasons I make sure I know how everything I own works. That, and the good ol' hacker ethic.
- baddox 13y ago
  More obvious than cynical.
anigbrowl 13y ago
Why do you think this is unique to the US? There are reactionaries everywhere, and in most* places they hold much greater sway than in the US. * Edit: well 'most' is highly subjective, but I hope we can agree on 'many.'

JonFish85 13y ago

"If western politicians could just get over their taboos about drug use and let idiots stuff themselves with whatever drugs they like, not just nicotine and alcohol, we would make the US richer and safer." Seriously? I'm not sure if you're saying to legalize all drugs, but that's how I'm interpreting this.... Legalizing addictive drugs will make us safer & richer? I feel like if we legalized heroin, we'd have junkies all over the place running around stealing whatever isn't bolted down just to get the next high. It affects far more than just the user, it affects the families, the kids, the neighborhood, the town, etc. Even if we taxed it, those taxes would likely go right back into having more security: police officers, hospitals, etc. Sure pot might be more or less harmless, but letting people stuff themselves with any drug of choice seems very wrong. There are some drugs that I think should absolutely be restricted very tightly.

pessimizer 13y ago
A dose of heroin costs a nickel. You don't have to steal very much to accumulate a nickel. The reason that junkies are thieves are the prices caused by prohibition.
seiji 13y ago
Legalizing alcohol will make us safer & richer? I feel like if we legalized alcohol, we'd have drunks all over the place abusing their partners and killing people with intoxicated driving.
pstuart 13y ago
Right now "legalized heroin" is killing lots of people: http://www.tampabay.com/news/nation/drug-overdose-deaths-up-for-11th-consecutive-year/1275855 http://www.tampabay.com/news/nation/drug-overdose-deaths-up-... Making it illegal doesn't stop those who will use it. It didn't stop my brother, who ended up dying from a heroin overdose. But legal alcohol was always available and my mother was able to drink herself to death. Legally. So let me call the cops on you for having beer in your house and kick in your doors and kill your dog and hall your ass off to jail for your protection. Ugh. Keep your fucking nanny state to yourself.
seldo 13y ago

baddox 13y ago

> If western politicians could just get over their taboos about drug use This is a bit naive. I don't think taboos are responsible for drug prohibition. I think it's the economic interests of industries which benefit from drug prohibition, like police, prisons, alcohol, and pharmaceuticals.

dasil003 13y ago
You didn't deserve to be downvoted for this comment. The taboos may keep these things in place, but we have to ask how the taboos got their in the first place. In the case of cannabis it was largely as a result of DuPont being unable to compete with industrial hemp, and leverage a little racist fear-mongering by borrowing the Mexican term marijuana to make it appear extra dangerous. Take a look at the film Reefer Madness from the 30s to see the ridiculous propaganda that they were feeding to the public.
- atondwal 13y ago
  I think you got the original causes right on, but I don't think it's taboos that keep them in place; I think it's a jobs thing (for cops and DEA agents).
  - dasil003 13y ago
    That's where the lobbying comes from, taboos are where the political capital comes from.
jusben1369 13y ago
I suspect the police force would dislike being put in this category. But in general, I can't really agree with you. It's hard to deny that in Western culture there have been moral/religious taboos around drug use for centuries. People act strangely on drugs and that quite frankly scares the heck out of many people. Once laws are in place all sorts of unintended consequences occur around beneficiaries (ie Hippies!) but the root cause is this long running taboo around drug use. That's why this is so powerful to me.

derleth 13y ago

I want to know if Portuguese emergency rooms (and hospitals in general) are having to deal with more drug addicts and drug-related acute health problems (overdoses are only one variety) and drug-related complications to existing health problems. Everyone knows about overdoses. But if you take opioids to the point you become physically dependent and then you need surgery, the anesthesia provider has to work around a body with a different (narrower!) dose-response curve to anesthetics: Normal people have a broad range of doses which provide pain control but don't kill them. A long-term addict has a very narrow range between "Not feeling it" and "Heart just stopped." That's just one example. I'm sure there are others. How are Portuguese healthcare providers dealing with this?

samatman 13y ago
Better than they were when there were strong legal reasons not to disclose one's status as a junkie, I dare say.

codex 13y ago

While I agree with your points, I wonder if legalization temporarily boosts other types of crime, as former "criminals" seek other forms of easy money to maintain their lifestyle and social status. Drug dealing is a form of gainful employment for many who have few other skills.

hadem 13y ago
So we should keep these drugs illegal so we can ensure that drug dealers have "jobs"...?
adventured 13y ago
American prohibition covered that ground. There's a short spasm by organized crime as they fight to stay alive, and then the system goes into cardiac arrest. Ideally you have a government that simultaneously hammers organized crime at the same time their funding is drying up.
tomjen3 13y ago
I have heard this argument a lot and I don't buy it, because if there were some other thing they could do to make more money easier than drugs why not do that now? I mean it is not like they couldn't stop trading drugs today if that is what they wanted.
- codex 13y ago
  Oh, I don't think other forms of crime would be easier; just that other forms of crime may be the next easiest thing to try.
  - tomjen3 13y ago
    Sure but in that case the value of the crime goes down (either because it doesn't make so much money or because it is harder or more dangerous) in which case (law of supply and demand) the supply of criminals goes down too. And which crimes should they go for? Guns aren't needed when you don't need to defend a territory. Smuggling would be an obvious next step, but what should they smuggle? Diamants? Counterfeit goods? Women? All those are much more difficult to smuggle than drugs and the price per kilo is much, much less so they would have to invent new ways of smuggling. At present drug prizes it makes sense to build one way semi-submercibles (or even submarines) to get the stuff from Columbia to the US, I doubt the risk is worth it if you are to smuggle counterfeit goods at a few dollars a pound.

adventured 13y ago

Another way it cuts crime dramatically: it neuters the drug cartels by removing at least half their market (plausibly a lot more, as their infrastructure including manufacturing would be eroded). That didn't seem to fall into your two examples. At least 60,000 people were murdered by organized crime just in Felipe Calderon's six year term. One more way: by legalizing and taxing it, there properly should be more money available for treatment, helping to eliminate dangerous lifestyles that often cross over into crime.

ignostic 13y ago

There may be something that the United States can do to help your country in this area, but there are also things that your country can do to help itself. Why have your lawmakers decriminalized or legalized the growth and distribution of these controlled substances? Supply and demand. Your response only tackles half of the problem - demand - while ignoring the half that hits closer to your home.

InclinedPlane 13y ago

There are so many more direct and higher order effects of drug prohibition, just in regards to crime. 1: It gives easy revenue for criminals. 2: It puts many people into the "criminal" category, making them much less willing to interact with law enforcement and making it more likely that they will be willing to consort with true criminals. 3: It takes away resources from the criminal justice system, and further perverts it as well. It breeds the sort of police officer who is unskilled at forming a bond with the community they serve and with basic policework and instead focuses on making drug busts. It also breeds the sort of "assumed guilty" plea bargain dominated prosecutor model. 4: As a consequence of 1 and 2, the cognitive dissonance of the law banning victimless drug use causes many police officers to lose their respect for the law as well. And because of the wealth of criminal drug dealing enterprises there becomes a natural synergy which promotes police corruption. 5: Similarly, due to drug forfeiture laws it becomes possible for the way that police undertake law enforcement activities to dramatically affect their own budgets and resources. Naturally police organizations tend to be drawn to the activities which provide the most revenue, drug busts, to the detriment of other policing. 6: Because of the drug/criminal connection combined with rampant police crack downs due to the above factors drug busts can often be dangerous, which pushes police officers even farther away from a healthy relationship with their communities and increasingly toward a militarized relationship which spills over into every citizen/police interaction and further poisons the relationship.