Did Decriminalizing Pot Cause the Heroin Crisis?

 

ap070120018687Let me say at the outset that I’m dubious. But Don Winslow makes an interesting case in El Chapo and the Secret History of the Heroin Crisis:

If you wonder why America is in the grips of a heroin epidemic that kills two hundred people a week, take a hard look at the legalization of pot, which destroyed the profits of the Mexican cartels. How did they respond to a major loss in revenue? Like any company, they created an irresistible new product and flooded the market. The scariest part: this might not have happened with El Chapo in charge.

He argues that the Sinaloa Cartel — whose flagship product had been weed — found itself suddenly unable to compete against a superior American product with dramatically lower transport and security costs. “Once-vast fields in Durango now lie fallow.” This of course was supposed to be a selling point of decriminalization: It would put the cartels out of business. Except that it didn’t. Instead of taking up gainful employment as insurance adjustors or chartered accountants, they analyzed the US market and saw an unfilled niche. A growing number of Americans were addicted to expensive prescription opioids:

They increased the production of Mexican heroin by almost 70 percent, and also raised the purity level, bringing in Colombian cooks to create “cinnamon” heroin as strong as the East Asian product. They had been selling a product that was about 46 percent pure, now they improved it to 90 percent.

Their third move was classic market economics—they dropped the price. A kilo of heroin went for as much as $200,000 in New York City a few years ago, cost $80,000 in 2013, and now has dropped to around $50,000. More of a better product for less money: You can’t beat it.

At the same time, American drug and law-enforcement officials, concerned about the dramatic surge in overdose deaths from pharmaceutical opioids (165,000 from 1999 to 2014), cracked down on both legal and illegal distribution, opening the door for Mexican heroin, which sold for five to ten bucks a dose.

With consequences we all know — 125 deaths a day, more than five an hour, a fatality level that matches the deaths from AIDS at the height of the epidemic.

Many journalists, including Winslow, believe the Mexican government wound up supporting the Sinaloa Cartel during the worst years of the Cartel Wars on the grounds that someone had to win for there to be even a modicum of stability. The Sinaloa crew was, at least, averse to killing civilians, which couldn’t be said of their rivals. When Guzmán was recaptured in 2014, Winslow predicted that like Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein, Mexico would now be plunged into blood feuds in a chaotic power struggle:

I reminded them that in the power vacuum that followed Saddam Hussein’s capture and subsequent execution, Iraq splintered into sectarian violence, Shiite against Sunni. ISIS came into being, overran Iraqi and Syrian cities, and launched a reign of terror.

Look, I shed no tears for either Hussein or Guzmán. Both were killers and torturers. But the fact is that the horrific violence of Guzmán’s war of conquest had largely abated by 2014, precisely because he had won the war (with at least the passive assistance of the Mexican and U. S. governments) and established what’s come to be called the Pax Sinaloa.

The cartels, he says, control somewhere between 8 and 12 percent of the Mexican economy. The Mexican economy is dependent on the drug trade. He doesn’t buy the story about El Chapo escaping his maximum security prison through a mile-long tunnel, by the way:

For the record, Guzmán did not go out that tunnel on a motorcycle. Steve McQueen escapes on motorcycles. My money says that Guzmán didn’t go into that tunnel at all; anyone who can afford to pay $50 million in bribes and finance the excavation of a mile-long tunnel can also afford not to use it.

Gentle reader, the man is worth $1 billion. He was thinking about buying the Chelsea Football Club. He went out the front door. … Guzmán didn’t escape; he was let out so that he could try to reestablish order.

At roughly the same time, Fentanyl enters the scene. For narcos, it’s got huge advantages over heroin. It’s made in a lab, so you don’t need poppy fields. You don’t need to hire people to tend and harvest the crop. It’s incredibly powerful, so you can smuggle more per courrier.

But it’s the profits that will make fentanyl the new crack cocaine, which created the enormous wealth of the Mexican cartels in the eighties and nineties. A kilo of fentanyl can be stepped on sixteen to twenty-four times to create an astounding return on investment of $1.3 million per kilo, compared with $271,000 per kilo of heroin.

No wonder the DEA estimates that the importation of fentanyl from Mexico is up by 65 percent from 2014.

Fentanyl is now mixed with heroin to increase its potency. Unwitting heroin users die from taking a same-sized dose. Doctors and cops don’t realize they need a much stronger dose of Narcan to revive someone who’s taken an overdose. And it’s even more addictive than heroin: Once you’ve tried it, you don’t go back. The combination of lab-produced fentanyl and the fracturing of the Sinaloa Cartel “is a catastrophe for law enforcement and American society as a whole but an absolute boon for the narcos seeking to supplant the old order.” The profits ensure that up-and-coming cartels can afford to pay their fighters.

The rest of the article’s a great read — starring Sean Penn, a ravishing telenovela star named Kate, and a monkey — but if you’re strapped for time, short version is Guzmán winds up back in jail. And nothing changes.

The Los Angeles Times estimates that two thirds of Mexican drug lords have been either killed or imprisoned. And what’s the result? Drugs are more plentiful, more potent, and cheaper than ever. Deaths from overdoses are at an all-time high. Violence in Mexico, once declining, is starting to rise again. Just last week, I looked at photographs of the bodies of four people stuffed into a car trunk in Tijuana. The bodies showed signs of torture. …

… Someone will replace El Chapo, just as he replaced his predecessors. My bet’s on El Mencho, but it really doesn’t matter. That’s the lesson we seem to have to learn over and over and over again, world without end, amen. Guzmán was right: “If there was no consumption, there would be no sales.” I’m always amazed that progressive young millennials will picket a grocery chain for not buying fair-trade coffee but will go home and do drugs that are brought to them by the killers, torturers, and sadists of the cartels. …

As long as the U. S. and Europe continue to buy billions of dollars’ worth of drugs a year while at the same time spending billions to intercept them, we will create an endless succession of Chapos and Menchos.

An entire economy is based on drug prohibition and punishment, something to the tune of $50 billion a year, more than double the estimated $22 billion we spend on heroin.

I’m not persuaded that this wouldn’t have happened absent the decriminalization of pot, are you? If it had remained profitable to sell weed, I reckon these guys would have sold weed and opioids. If you argue as Winslow does that this is an entirely demand-driven industry, it doesn’t make sense to think that the cartels only have the wit, resources, or manpower to sell one drug at a time.

But it’s easy to persuade me that so long as there’s a multi-billion market for drugs in the US and Europe, someone will supply it. And easy to persuade me that the war on drugs has resulted in social catastrophe for the US and Mexico — probably more of a catastrophe than total decriminalization could ever be. Almost half the federal prison population is in the pen for a drug-related offense. The US has about five percent of the world’s population, but a quarter of its prison population — a grievous shame in a country that prides itself in being the land of the free. Locking up drug offenders ensures that families are destroyed, children fatherless, and the curse of underclass life passed to a new generation.

And for Mexico, it’s been far worse. In 2014, researcher Molly Molloy estimated the human toll of the previous six years, and found that as many as 130,000 people or more had been killed, 27,000 were missing, and an untold number buried in mass graves.

“The overwhelming majority of the deaths are people shot down on the street, in their homes or workplaces, on playgrounds, etc. In my reading of the daily accounts of the killings, it is clear that most of the victims are ordinary people, exhibiting nothing to indicate they are employed in the lucrative drug business,” Molloy wrote. …

Amid all the killing, Molloy told NCR, she has seen no evidence the flow of drugs from Mexico has decreased, which prompts her to ask, “So if this is a drug war, who is winning, and what were all those dead people killed for?”

Thoughts?

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  1. MSJL Thatcher
    MSJL
    @MSJL

    Marion Evans:

    Wait, if you take the money out of it by making it legal, there would be no drug crime any more. It would cost a fraction of what it costs now. And I am not getting what you are saying about walls.

    In this context, define “cost”.  Cost of law enforcement resources, enforcement, prison time, etc., directly related to interdicting and punishing drug crimes?  Okay.

    But my concern is that we allow greater and unrestricted use of these substances, and you end up with even more users and addicts, and another set of problems.

    We can theoretically discuss what an autonomous person decides to ingest and protecting the individual and property rights of others.  But the consequences of failure incur very real costs as when someone stoned drives down the wrong side of the street and plows into my wife’s car.  (Example only, this has actually never happened, thank goodness.)  Those costs are real.  Who bears those costs?  The bankrupt idiot who may or may not have survived that crash?  At that point the costs of enforcement look really good to me versus the concept of theoretical freedom.

    In some ways this is similar to the folks who adore illegal immigrants and change the channel when the news is reported of one of them killing someone while driving intoxicated, of course without a license, and after being arrested and released a half-dozen times.  The theoretical benefits of a generous immigration system seem really nice if you can ignore the very real costs of failure.

    • #61
  2. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Sabrdance: 1.) Prohibition worked. Alcohol consumption dropped through the floor by the late 1920s, and the violence was broken by the early 30s. Prohibition was repealed during the Great Depression because we had to do something with all the crops (burning them wasn’t going over well) and with the collapse in trade pretty well finishing off the revenue from the tariff, we needed something else to tax.

    Why do you think the narrative of  prohibition ending because it didn’t work because so popular and successful?  Has this story been told?

    • #62
  3. Austin Murrey Inactive
    Austin Murrey
    @AustinMurrey

    The Reticulator:

    Sabrdance: 1.) Prohibition worked. Alcohol consumption dropped through the floor by the late 1920s, and the violence was broken by the early 30s. Prohibition was repealed during the Great Depression because we had to do something with all the crops (burning them wasn’t going over well) and with the collapse in trade pretty well finishing off the revenue from the tariff, we needed something else to tax.

    Why do you think the narrative of prohibition ending because it didn’t work because so popular and successful? Has this story been told?

    People like booze?

    • #63
  4. Owen Findy Inactive
    Owen Findy
    @OwenFindy

    I’ll be stunned if someone on one side of this debate changes the mind of anyone on the other side about the topic of the debate.

    • #64
  5. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Owen Findy:I’ll be stunned if someone on one side of this debate changes the mind of anyone on the other side about the topic of the debate.

    Depends on what you mean by “one side”.  I’ve always been toward the squishy middle — in recent years usually on the side in favor of decriminalization.  But I find Sabrdance’s information to be intriguing. I always value historical information, and there have been many times in my life when learning more history has caused me to modify my views.

    • #65
  6. Owen Findy Inactive
    Owen Findy
    @OwenFindy

    The Reticulator:

    Owen Findy:I’ll be stunned if someone on one side of this debate changes the mind of anyone on the other side about the topic of the debate.

    Depends on what you mean by “one side”. I’ve always been toward the squishy middle — in recent years usually on the side in favor of decriminalization. But I find Sabrdance’s information to be intriguing. I always value historical information, and there have been many times in my life when learning more history has caused me to modify my views.

    Yeaahhhhh, I knew I was oversimplifying the categories….  Ahh, well…

    • #66
  7. Sabrdance Member
    Sabrdance
    @Sabrdance

    The Reticulator:

    Sabrdance: Why do you think the narrative of prohibition ending because it didn’t work because so popular and successful? Has this story been told?

    Probably for the same reason “you can’t legislate morality” is a popular cliche.  Everyone says it, no one actually thinks about it.  For the same reason no one actually remembers the reason prohibition started in the first place (it wasn’t because social reformers and religious people hated alcohol, it was because America and England had huge problems with alcoholism leading to violence like you wouldn’t believe -originally they just wanted to ban hard liquors that were thought to lead to drunkenness, but that was hard to explain in a ballot petition, so they went with a total ban).  Moderns love to feel superior over their ancestors.

    You can see the drop-off in this chart:

    Chart Gallons of Ethanol from Beer, Spirits, and Wine Per Capita of the Drinking-Age Population

    from Schaeffer Library of Drug Policy, a reformist outfit.  You can also see that the prohibitionsists got what they really wanted: a switch from liquor to beer and wine (though not as severe as they’d have liked).

    Violence is somewhat harder to disaggregate because definitions aren’t consistent over the period, except for murder, and organized crime didn’t produce most murders (lynching was in competition with them, plus all the other reasons).  But Capone was the last of the major figures taken down, and he was taken in 1931, and the violence plateaued about the same time, but Prohibition was repealed in 1933.

    • #67
  8. Bryan G. Stephens Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens
    @BryanGStephens

    Fred Cole:

    Larry3435: I guess I thought that was just a given.

    Well, it’s worth mentioning because the only way to “solve” the drug problem is to make the costs too high for anyone. Not that I favor it, but if you wanted to effectively eliminate the drug problem, you could start cutting off heads.

    You really do not understand addiction, if you think this would stop addicts from seeking drugs.

    • #68
  9. Sabrdance Member
    Sabrdance
    @Sabrdance

    The Reticulator:

    Owen Findy:I’ll be stunned if someone on one side of this debate changes the mind of anyone on the other side about the topic of the debate.

    Depends on what you mean by “one side”. I’ve always been toward the squishy middle — in recent years usually on the side in favor of decriminalization. But I find Sabrdance’s information to be intriguing. I always value historical information, and there have been many times in my life when learning more history has caused me to modify my views.

    Historical information is important, but of limited use.  Prohibition worked -alcohol consumption dropped, what consumption existed switched to beer and wine, and after an initial surge of organized crime, the FBI and various state agencies figured out how to combat it, just like they did the Crack Wars of the 1990s.  This doesn’t make prohibition a good idea (generally speaking, I’m fine with local options on alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana, and undecided-to-opposed on the harder stuff).

    My point is only that drug laws in themselves are not driving crime -addiction is driving crime, and that will continue to be the case with or without drug laws.  Thus, drug laws have to be justified based on their own merits, as legalizing or banning certain substances will have very little effect on crime by itself.  (For this reason, I favor treatment regimes, but even those are a longshot -very little evidence they work on hard cases.)

    • #69
  10. Bryan G. Stephens Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens
    @BryanGStephens

    Alcohol is the #1 Drug because it is legal, it is not legal in spite of being the # 1 drug.

    I like Accountability Courts that use the fact someone has committed a criminal offence to force them into a treatment program, with the Court to make sure they stay on task.

    Our rate of Success for our Mental Health Court is 90% have had no further contact with police. (About 60% of these also have had a drug problem).

    Addicts are no longer rational actors. They are certainly not free, they are slaves to their drug.

    So I would like to see changes in how the War on Drugs is run, but I do not think making it all legal will help. Libertarianism assumes that people are rational actors. Does not work for the people who are not.

    • #70
  11. Bryan G. Stephens Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens
    @BryanGStephens

    Sabrdance:

    The Reticulator:

    Owen Findy:I’ll be stunned if someone on one side of this debate changes the mind of anyone on the other side about the topic of the debate.

    Depends on what you mean by “one side”. I’ve always been toward the squishy middle — in recent years usually on the side in favor of decriminalization. But I find Sabrdance’s information to be intriguing. I always value historical information, and there have been many times in my life when learning more history has caused me to modify my views.

    Historical information is important, but of limited use. Prohibition worked -alcohol consumption dropped, what consumption existed switched to beer and wine, and after an initial surge of organized crime, the FBI and various state agencies figured out how to combat it, just like they did the Crack Wars of the 1990s. This doesn’t make prohibition a good idea (generally speaking, I’m fine with local options on alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana, and undecided-to-opposed on the harder stuff).

    My point is only that drug laws in themselves are not driving crime -addiction is driving crime, and that will continue to be the case with or without drug laws. Thus, drug laws have to be justified based on their own merits, as legalizing or banning certain substances will have very little effect on crime by itself. (For this reason, I favor treatment regimes, but even those are a longshot -very little evidence they work on hard cases.)

    I disagree with the last line. I have seen treatment work very well for very hard cases. What is required, is a lot of energy and time on the part of a lot of people, and the addict has to be willing to stay in treatment. The threat of incarceration over 2+ year program, (often with trips back to the County Detention center once or twice) is a great stick. The Courts and Treatment Providers can work wonders together.

    The real problem is, they cost money, and we are only serving a handful of the people we could be serving. What if all the seized money went to treatment?

    • #71
  12. Sabrdance Member
    Sabrdance
    @Sabrdance

    Bryan G. Stephens:

    Sabrdance:

    The Reticulator:

    I disagree with the last line. I have seen treatment work very well for very hard cases. What is required, is a lot of energy and time on the part of a lot of people, and the addict has to be willing to stay in treatment. The threat of incarceration over 2+ year program, (often with trips back to the County Detention center once or twice) is a great stick. The Courts and Treatment Providers can work wonders together.

    The real problem is, they cost money, and we are only serving a handful of the people we could be serving. What if all the seized money went to treatment?

    We’re not in disagreement -that’s what I was trying to say within the word limit.  Treatment works on those who want it to work -and on the margins we can make it easier for people to want it to work by holding a prison sentence over their head, or having a lot of people help keep the addict in treatment.  Neither of those, I believe, is likely to be a general policy due to expense -so we will continue to fail on the cases where this is not available -ie, “hard cases.”

    • #72
  13. Sabrdance Member
    Sabrdance
    @Sabrdance

    Bryan G. Stephens:Alcohol is the #1 Drug because it is legal, it is not legal in spite of being the # 1 drug.

    I like Accountability Courts that use the fact someone has committed a criminal offence to force them into a treatment program, with the Court to make sure they stay on task.

    Our rate of Success for our Mental Health Court is 90% have had no further contact with police. (About 60% of these also have had a drug problem).

    Addicts are no longer rational actors. They are certainly not free, they are slaves to their drug.

    So I would like to see changes in how the War on Drugs is run, but I do not think making it all legal will help. Libertarianism assumes that people are rational actors. Does not work for the people who are not.

    Kentucky has a similar program, the Drug Courts.  The University of Kentucky analysis is distressingly vague on the question of study mortality (that is, people who drop out of the study because they don’t complete the program), but they show it working at similar rates, and I know the people who did the study -they know about mortality threat, and they’re honest people.  So I hope they just didn’t include that because they figured politicians wouldn’t understand it, not because they are hiding the fact that the treatment program has a high dropout rate.

    • #73
  14. Bryan G. Stephens Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens
    @BryanGStephens

    Sabrdance:

    Bryan G. Stephens:

    Sabrdance:

    The Reticulator:

    I disagree with the last line. I have seen treatment work very well for very hard cases. What is required, is a lot of energy and time on the part of a lot of people, and the addict has to be willing to stay in treatment. The threat of incarceration over 2+ year program, (often with trips back to the County Detention center once or twice) is a great stick. The Courts and Treatment Providers can work wonders together.

    The real problem is, they cost money, and we are only serving a handful of the people we could be serving. What if all the seized money went to treatment?

    We’re not in disagreement -that’s what I was trying to say within the word limit. Treatment works on those who want it to work -and on the margins we can make it easier for people to want it to work by holding a prison sentence over their head, or having a lot of people help keep the addict in treatment. Neither of those, I believe, is likely to be a general policy due to expense -so we will continue to fail on the cases where this is not available -ie, “hard cases.”

    Maybe I need to sponsor you to Thatcher then. :)

    Seriously though, the Brain is rewired with addiction. It is sad. Very hard to fix.

    Interestingly, my guess is, if we could solve that issue, we could create diet pills that actually worked, because most of us struggle with our relationship with food like addicts do with drugs. IT acts on the same part of the brain in the same way.

    • #74
  15. Front Seat Cat Member
    Front Seat Cat
    @FrontSeatCat

    Claire Berlinski, Ed.:

    Instugator:We also have much lower rates of violent crime than they do in England and most of Europe.

    I am proud of our prison policy – it beats the eurozone alternative.

    Huh? This is the comparison with France:

    Screen Shot 2016-08-11 at 17.24.33

    And it’s similar throughout Europe and the UK. There’s much less violent crime in Europe and the UK than the US. Where’d you hear that?

    Claire, what do you attribute this chart information to?  In other words, what are we doing wrong here in the states?

    • #75
  16. Front Seat Cat Member
    Front Seat Cat
    @FrontSeatCat

    Marion Evans:

    Front Seat Cat:

    Marion Evans:

    Front Seat Cat:

    Marion Evans:The war on drugs is not winnable

    The war on drugs is winnable.

    I’m confident like I am confident if we stamp out some terrorists here, and more pop up there, we don’t quit for that reason. The parents of dead children grieving in an interview on 60 Minutes was enough right there for me to keep going. These were people in safe neighborhoods, children with good grades, athletes. The beautiful mountain town where my sister lives has become rife with drugs, deaths and crime. Legal or not, you still have to pay for it. We may not be able to solve the entire problem, but we can continue to fight back –

    Marion – I can’t in good conscience, be a co-conspirator to the illness of my fellow Americans to agreeing to the legalization of drugs that we know are bad for you.  It’s not about taking the money out of it – how many more vices can we offer up to modern society? Porn, drugs, blurring the lines of what your sex is, every kind of deviance that can be thought of is being offered – I would not let a drug addict starve – Mother Theresa picked up the broke, the sick, and the undesirables out of the gutter – did she offer them legal heroin? How about pot? There are other ways to combat the mess we are seeing in society.

    • #76
  17. Bryan G. Stephens Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens
    @BryanGStephens

    Americans are more violent than Europeans. It is part of our Shadow.

    You cannot have the creative destruction without it.

    • #77
  18. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Owen Findy:

    Percival: Decriminalize X and the cartels will redouble the importation of Y and introduce Z

    Isn’t that because Y and Z are still illegal?

    No laws, therefore no crimes, therefore no criminals, therefore no police.

    How come libertarianism never works that way?

    • #78
  19. Zafar Member
    Zafar
    @Zafar

    It’s about addiction – going deeper, it’s about what causes addiction. (Hint: imho not drugs.). Read Chasing The Scream – it’s breathless but thought provoking.

    Re winning the drug war – why are people so invested in re-inventing the wheel? Consider Portugal.

    • #79
  20. Owen Findy Inactive
    Owen Findy
    @OwenFindy

    Sabrdance: addiction is driving crime, and that will continue to be the case with or without drug laws.

    Not crime that’s a function of the illegality of drugs itself.  Alcohol’s legal.  Do we call the robbery of a liquor store an “alcohol-crime”?  No.  It’s robbery.

    What crimes are you thinking of that will happen even if drugs are legal?

    • #80
  21. Owen Findy Inactive
    Owen Findy
    @OwenFindy

    Percival:

    No laws, therefore no crimes, therefore no criminals, therefore no police.

    How come libertarianism never works that way?

    There should be laws against the violations of rights.  What rights are being violated when someone sits in his home and shoots up?

    • #81
  22. Bryan G. Stephens Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens
    @BryanGStephens

    Owen Findy:

    Percival:

    No laws, therefore no crimes, therefore no criminals, therefore no police.

    How come libertarianism never works that way?

    There should be laws against the violations of rights. What rights are being violated when someone sits in his home and shoots up?

    If all addicts did was sit in their home and shoot up, we would be golden. Thanks to the effects of addiction where the person is no longer a rational actor, so they do other things that do violate the rights of others. Alcohol is legal, and people violate the rights of others when they Drive Drunk.

    • #82
  23. Sabrdance Member
    Sabrdance
    @Sabrdance

    Owen Findy:

    Sabrdance: addiction is driving crime, and that will continue to be the case with or without drug laws.

    Not crime that’s a function of the illegality of drugs itself. Alcohol’s legal. Do we call the robbery of a liquor store an “alcohol-crime”? No. It’s robbery.

    What crimes are you thinking of that will happen even if drugs are legal?

    Was there a part of the example about two guys being high getting into an argument that escalates to one of them killing the other that had anything to do with the illegality of the substances they were getting high on?  I confess, I don’t see it.  And yes, a ridiculously high number of assaults and murders are drug or alcohol influenced even before we start incorporating drunk driving manslaughters.

    • #83
  24. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Sabrdance: Historical information is important, but of limited use.

    Yes, and the universe we inhabit is important, but limited.

    • #84
  25. Owen Findy Inactive
    Owen Findy
    @OwenFindy

    Bryan G. Stephens:

    Owen Findy:

    Percival:

    No laws, therefore no crimes, therefore no criminals, therefore no police.

    How come libertarianism never works that way?

    There should be laws against the violations of rights. What rights are being violated when someone sits in his home and shoots up?

    If all addicts did was sit in their home and shoot up, we would be golden. Thanks to the effects of addiction where the person is no longer a rational actor, so they do other things that do violate the rights of others. Alcohol is legal, and people violate the rights of others when they Drive Drunk.

    Yes, and that is the point where they are violating rights and should be held to account.  How is making into a lawbreaker a harmless heroin addict sitting carefully, conscientiously at home different from what the Left wants to do to millions of harmless gun owners?

    • #85
  26. Bryan G. Stephens Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens
    @BryanGStephens

    Owen Findy:

    Bryan G. Stephens:

    Owen Findy:

    Percival:

    No laws, therefore no crimes, therefore no criminals, therefore no police.

    How come libertarianism never works that way?

    There should be laws against the violations of rights. What rights are being violated when someone sits in his home and shoots up?

    If all addicts did was sit in their home and shoot up, we would be golden. Thanks to the effects of addiction where the person is no longer a rational actor, so they do other things that do violate the rights of others. Alcohol is legal, and people violate the rights of others when they Drive Drunk.

    Yes, and that is the point where they are violating rights and should be held to account. How is making into a lawbreaker a harmless heroin addict sitting carefully, conscientiously at home different from what the Left wants to do to millions of harmless gun owners?

    These don’t exist in large numbers in relation to the overall number of heroin dealers.

    Also, if you make thing legal, there will be more use and thus more addicts. I’d rather not have that.

    • #86
  27. BD Member
    BD
    @

    I was surprised when I heard in college that alcohol use had decreased during Prohibition, because all the pop culture I had seen suggested otherwise.

    Then years later I read this article in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Why We’ll Never Really Know If Imbibing Rose After Prohibition Began” (4/6/2005).   It  states that “No Historical Scholarship can ever definitively answer the question: Did Americans drink more or less alcohol during Prohibition than before it.”

    • #87
  28. Sabrdance Member
    Sabrdance
    @Sabrdance

    BD:I was surprised when I heard in college that alcohol use had decreased during Prohibition, because all the pop culture I had seen suggested otherwise.

    Then years later I read this article in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Why We’ll Never Really Know If Imbibing Rose After Prohibition Began” (4/6/2005). It states that “No Historical Scholarship can ever definitively answer the question: Did Americans drink more or less alcohol during Prohibition than before it.”

    Definitively, no -but all the evidence we have points to it.  From the above estimates of consumption to the declines in alcohol related violence (domestic and otherwise) to deaths from liver cirrhosis.

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  29. Zafar Member
    Zafar
    @Zafar

    Bryan G. Stephens:Also, if you make thing legal, there will be more use and thus more addicts. I’d rather not have that.

    Portugal experienced a fall in drug use and drug related violence in the 14 years after it decriminalized all drug use. Including heroin.

    • #89
  30. MSJL Thatcher
    MSJL
    @MSJL

    Zafar:

    Bryan G. Stephens:Also, if you make thing legal, there will be more use and thus more addicts. I’d rather not have that.

    Portugal experienced a fall in drug use and drug related violence in the 14 years after it decriminalized all drug use. Including heroin.

    I think Portugal and other countries certainly stand as data points and we can’t dismiss them or claim we have nothing to learn.  But the US has 30X the population spread over 100X the geographic area (Portugal is slightly smaller than Indiana according to the CIA World Factbook), with wide range of cultural differences, social and welfare networks, healthcare systems, etc.  I am always wary of saying we can transplant policies from very small countries and assume they will be equally effective here.

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