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Lastly, the guys chat on Biden’s big pot pardon and the crazy people walking the streets.
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Well, not now if you’re metric is how powerful the cartels and organized drug crime is at this point in history. Megan McArdle literally said that if we legalized hard drugs now it wouldn’t change the power of the cartels.
The government uses force in these situations all of the time. Law enforcement works for many things. Law enforcement works better than idealism, obviously, many times. I’m just talking about a different type of government force. Law enforcement and prisons work better for certain types of crimes and not others.
We should have helped them kill themselves decades ago. I don’t see a better option.
Dennis Prager says the idea that people are basically good is wrong. This isn’t going to work well enough.
I am specifically only talking about hard drugs consumed in certain government approved areas. I’m not talking about marijuana.
Is it the role of the federal government to hand out hard drugs for free? Do you honestly think the taxpayer would feel that this was a wise use of their money? And just wait for the lawsuits to blossom when people sue because the government’s “free” drugs led to some loved one’s death or addiction. Not to mention the moral corruption….
You have never heard of slave labor in China? If so, why would you not think it’s likely a factor in most businesses, including pharmaceutical labs? If not slave labor, then it is at least very cheap compared to their Western counterparts.
Again, I don’t see how the government could have had much success against the problem of people’s willingness to self-destruct. I don’t think it has the answers now.
I’m not saying anybody’s going to buy it, I’m just saying it’s a superior policy. The situation is absolutely horrific right now.
They have to sign a waiver etc. I really doubt this is going to be a problem.
I would say the Mexican cartels are creating a lot of moral corruption right now.
I have never heard of this component holding the costs down in the hard drug business.
Just help them and get it over with and keep the money away from the cartels.
And yet the cultural stigmas were pretty effective in many areas, for a long time.
The problem there is that the effects of the drugs – including marijuana – are not, and cannot be, limited to the government approved areas.
This type of thing has been discussed over and over, here. Good luck.
I just said it’s still a superior policy to what we have now.
It’s all academic anyway, because we should have done it 1 million years ago. The suffering that the ORGANIZED Mexican cartels are unleashing is incredible.
That might work for those actually taking the drugs, but what about other people harmed by them? If person A gets free drugs from the government and becomes psychotic and then pushes person B in front of a train or sets them on fire or whatever, person B didn’t sign any waiver.
Also, how do you get someone to do the waiver before they’re already being influenced by the drugs, which could make their waiver invalid by reason of incompetence, or duress, or something.
What we do now is a fiscal hamster wheel that grows organized crime. That is just a fact. It makes people feel good about themselves.
I didn’t say it’s ideal, but what we have now is horrific.
Maybe you should find some answers before you keep claiming to have solutions, that it’s a superior policy, etc.
The big cities have NARCAN vending machines in critical areas now. You can’t make that up.
Everybody is whining about not enough religion and stigma and shame etc. Good luck with that.
The only “superiority” I can see in those claimed “superior” policies is the idea that it would cost the taxpayers less, but I doubt that’s actually true.
Please explain how the current situation is more horrific than what I describe as just one thing that could happen under your “superior” policy?
I am only proposing that it would have minimized the power of the cartels and organized crime. Megan McArdle is a hell of a lot smarter than any of us and she said it would have worked if we would have done it on a timely basis.
That doesn’t mean your idea is actually better. The best I can see is that you think it would cost taxpayers less money, but I find that doubtful, to say the least. Or maybe it could cost them less in TAXES, somehow – although I doubt that too – but more in every other way. Is that all that matters to you – and/or Megan McArdle – less GOVERNMENT spending? Even if the public ends up spending more individually than they had been paying in taxes?
They have more money to do more criminal things now. It’s a huge organization doing more things. It’s so bad, the DEA and all of that literally just changes who they attack to keep the friction up against all of them internally. It keeps them attacking each other as well. There is no ordinary lid on it like we expect from law enforcement.
Buckley’s not wrong, but probably a little late even in 1996. It’s not just pot or coke and booze, and hallucinogenics. The potency of even marijuana today, leaving out all the other different kinds of drugs that are widely available, is at minimum a step change that would impact that math. Legalizing comes with a cost, not just of the people who may be struggling today, but with the millions who will experiment and drop out of society, to fall into that safety net of treatment, that they may or may not ever get out of.
But directionally the argument is correct, although no matter the count of cops out there, they’re not all busting people for drugs 24/7. It’s some percentage of the total police force that does that, along with the incidental arrests for people speeding and they’re high, that kind of thing. Legalizing it would eliminate the profit motive, potentially, assuming that legalization made it cheaper, and that cartels and distribution networks wouldn’t constantly be moving ahead with new products before they can be reacted to and legalized by legislation after the fact.
It may be that the other collateral costs of legalization, increases in driving under the influence, domestic violence, reduced productivity at work, pick any out of a hat of thousands, would outweigh the cost savings of not enforcing prohibition of drugs. The non-tangible impacts cannot be dollarized, either, and that part is always left out – the cost of unfulfilled and wasted lives, for those who choose a drug over their families, friends, and career.
Not sure what that could be based on. Doing it earlier would have somehow meant China couldn’t use prison/slave/child labor to undercut US government prices? Does China know that? I doubt they would agree.
You casually ignore people who have used the safety net and gone on to lead sober and productive lives. No simple answer exists. Stop pretending there is one.
But “at cost” for the government is still going to be higher than the cartels can do it for.
This took 8 seconds of googling – if slave labor is used in illegal cigarette manufacture, would a cartel ignore this cost-saving option?
https://insightcrime.org/news/illegal-cigarettes-produced-with-slave-labor-in-brazil/
This took another 8 seconds.
https://abcnews.go.com/ABC_Univision/News/drug-cartels-mexico-enslave-young-professionals/story?id=17603640
That’s part of my argument as well. It seems hopelessly naive to believe that legalizing drugs would somehow only reduce total costs.
Actually I’m not the one pretending that. I would say it’s the “legalize drugs” people who think there’s a simple answer. Or at least that it would somehow cost less than the current situation, which seems obviously if not necessarily demonstrably-at-present false.
This is impolite, but I think what Buckley is talking about is forcing them to consume them in drug ghettos. That is basically what you have in places like Philadelphia. It’s incredible.
I think Megan McArdle’s position is it could have worked decades ago.
Organized crime should be a top priority at all times.
I am talking about the Mexican cartels. China’s chemical production is ancillary to that.
Maybe it doesn’t matter, but I was limiting it to the cost of production. When the cartel grows they are obviously going to do all kinds of evil things to create net profit.
That wasn’t my argument, for the third time.