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General Principles for Controlling Substances
Yesterday, Fred Cole challenged members who support the prohibition of at least some drugs to describe the first principles they use to come to their conclusions. That thread got pretty contentious, so I thought I’d start a second one answering his question.
Below you will find what I believe to be an excellent starting point for a general guiding principle related to making some drugs illegal. Before you read that, some guidelines and definitions.
By “drug”, I mean any of those substances commonly used recreationally. This includes, but is not limited to, alcohol and tobacco, as well as those substances more generally considered “drugs,” such as meth, heroine, cocaine, etc. That’s generally what we are all discussing, so there’s no need to ask question like “Oh yeah, well what about caffeine?”
By “make illegal” I mean control. By control I mean “make regulations at any level of government that specify how the substance is used, dispensed, manufactured, etc.”
By “general principle,” I mean a guiding rationale, that generally can be used as the basis for a decision, but may not be in some cases due to the specific nature of those cases.
My general principle is as follows:
There are some substances that ,when used in any quantity, render a person completely unable to function in society. Those substances should be carefully controlled. You should not be able to get those things over the counter. I would suggest that marijuana, tobacco, and alcohol are not in this group. I would further suggest that the drugs that do fit in this group should be determined by experts, such as pharmacists, medical doctors, drug and alcohol counselors, as well as recovered addicts.
My rationale is this: the use of these drugs causes undue burdens on society. Prolonged use makes it worse. Since “we” have to take care of people who use these drugs, “we” are justified — in a free society — in controlling the drugs, and taking appropriate action against those people. We can do so and still call our society free.
So, agree or disagree?
Published in General
False …
Um, because it doesn’t operate freely…
So laws retard the free sale of drugs?
Men with guns retard the free sale of drugs. Nothing about it is free…
At the same time, the prohibition is largely ineffective, so you get the costs of enforcement, plus the problems of a black market, with none of the benefits that come with a free market.
Much of the stuff that makes a free market work is missing from a black market. Free markets thrive on the dissemination of information – price signals, businesses’ public reputations, rating agencies and customer reviews, etc…
To badmouth a dealer for the poor quality of the illicit drugs he sold you is to admit to your own complicity in crime. Reliable information on firms’ reputations is therefore much harder to get ahold of in an illegal market.
Enforcement of contracts must happen by extralegal means, too, and while it’s often unnecessary to resort to the courtroom to resolve a contract dispute, there is a problem when the only people available to mediate your contractual disputes are themselves people of ill repute: which thugs would you trust to settle a dispute fairly?
People engaged in licit industry have the option of resolving market disputes through Better-Business-Bureau mediators rather than in the courtroom. BBB mediators have a well-known reputation for fairness and efficiency – if they didn’t, no one would use their services. There’s a reason the BBB doesn’t mediate disputes between druglords, though.
Other than men with guns, how would a free drug market differ from an unfree market?
I’m not dismissing the laws or the guns. I just do not see where a free market alters anything at the transaction level.
OK, but CVS isn’t going to sell crack.
So who is selling in a free drug market? Probably the same people who sell now, right? People who don’t mind destroying the lives of others for their own gain?
So, is it the sellers fault if someone chooses to use their product? Or do we each have responsibility for our own actions?
I oppose that too.
Do you consider tobacco companies more accountable that drug lords? If so, why? Do you suppose that’s a result of tobacco companies actually caring about their customers’ lives or because tobacco companies aren’t black-market businesses, but instead operate in the above-ground economy, where information is plentiful?
We each, including sellers, have responsibility for our actions.
But I’m not interested in fault.
Earlier, Fred said “who sells what and where, I’d let the free market decide that.” I’d like to discern what exactly the free market would sort out that would make it look different from today’s black market.
Then publish your chart in the law, and anything in the four squares in the upper right will be in the “controlled” category. And whomever is responsible for preparing and upgrading the grid probably won’t be subject to any political pressure.
If your argument is “people down the road will screw this up”, then I agree with you. But that’s no reason not to try and figure it out now.
The buyers and sellers would not go to jail for selling, and fraud and theft would be subject to legal remedies. Proceeds would be taxed, and organized crime would not be in control of the supply and sale.
OK, who would be?
I don’t mean specifically b/c that’s unknowable, but probably more likely strip club and hookah bar owners than Walgreens and WalMart, right?
Just trying to get a sense of what you think a free drug market looks like. Not judging.
As an alternative framework, what do you think of evaluating drugs based on their effect on mental or psychological capacity?
Our general “conservatarian” model assumes an adult in his “right mind.” There is a strong presumption that such a person should be left to make his own decisions. An entirely different rule applies to children and to adults with significant mental or psychological incapacity (e.g. serious dementia or Alzheimer’s).
It seems to me that calling certain drugs “addictive” is a way to express the idea that such drugs have the effect of taking away an adult user’s “right mind.” This concept could also apply to other self-destructive behaviors (e.g. gambling, sexual conduct).
In a free market does it matter who is selling? Whoever has it and wants to sell it will! The point is that they would be subject to standard trade law. As it is, they can sell someone rat poison instead of heroin and there is no recourse beyond street justice.
If Walgreens wants to sell heroin ( they do now, but only by prescription) they could. If they don’t want to , they won’t, and someone else will. Free market theory says that if there is a demand, a seller will fill the need.
Is that so universal that it can be implemented for everyone? Alcohol is extremely addictive for some, and not at all for others. One size does not fit all for this kind of evaluation.
Do you drink alcohol that people cooked up in their back yard in old car radiators?
Crack is a product of prohibition. Why do you assume it would exist without prohibition?
That’s the thing about markets, they’re not always predictable. Who will sell it? It depends on the drug and the customer. We can’t possibly know.
But we have a perfectly good mechanism to sort those things out: the market.
@PHenry, comment #75 is precisely what we need to get past. Everyone here knows what a free market is.
Anyone can sell. But the guy at the hookah bar is not a pharmacist. He won’t necessarily know about drug interactions and such. Should there be a licensing requirement?
Does the guy at the convenience store ask you if you’re taking Tylenol when he sells you beer?
Markets sort but they don’t always sort to the good. If we go legal, things might go bananas. Seems to me we ought to think things through first. We already know quite a bit about how the restrictions work and fail. It might be that in the case of deadly addictive substances, this is the best we can do.
What would “going bananas” look like?
So you’d ban alcohol and tobacco then? And you’d legalize pot, ecstasy and LSD?
It would remain a judgment call re whether a substantial proportion of users become addicted. I know that this is a fuzzy standard, but such is the nature of line-drawing. I think that the mental/psychological capacity idea helps answer the libertarian/conservatarian objection to drug laws in a way consistent with our treatment of other instances of adults acting outside their “right mind.”
Bananas would look something like significant increase in drug use, drug related deaths, drug related crimes, etc.
What would a good free market look like?
I think that it is entirely the case that prolonged drug use has a negative effect on people, and can render them unfit for society. Until we are ready to let someone die in the street due to drug use, I don’t think we can just say “Hey, they are adults, let them do what they want.”
I am immune to your Jedi mind tricks.
To answer your question, I didn’t look close enough at the chart to see what all was there. Again, a general principal that may not be applied always.
I’d like to point out that in my definition I said “controlled”. Alcohol and tobacco are both controlled substances. They should be, to some degree. Certainly not to the degree that you need a prescription to get them.
I’d make a chart that graphed immediate effects versus long term effects, if I were going to do it medically. I probably would have an axis for how addictive something is. Sugar is addictive, but I wouldn’t argue for controlling it as a drug. Same with caffeine.
So we should write the chart into law, until you actually look at it, then we should throw it (and the science behind it) out the window?
This may be why the posts become about you, and not the subject. You deliberate misconstrue what people are saying. What you’ve said here has no bearing on the discussion. You are just poking.