Why End The Drug War Essay Research

Why End The Drug War Essay, Research Paper

I think legalizing drugs is an excellent idea, for several reasons.

Less Violence

Violence in America would drop dramatically. As I understand it, most drug-related violence does not

consist of somebody becoming violent after shooting up. Most drug-related violence consists of (in

hypothetical order):

People who use violence while stealing to support their habit. With a free market in drugs, prices would drop dramatically, thus making it possible for most addicts to support their habit via lawful work.

Drug deals gone bad. When a deal goes bad in an open market, there are peaceful means of

recourse for the victim. One could complain to the Better Business Bureau or Consumer Reports;

one could file a lawsuit; one could just do business with somebody else. These options aren’t open

to black market dealers, so they are far more likely to resort to violence when a deal goes bad.

Gangs and syndicates who battle over turf. Open market competitors also battle over turf, but their

weapons are advertising, sales gimmicks, and just plain providing a better product at a lower price.

At their most violent, they might use lawsuits or government regulations to protect their turf. Any of

these options is preferible to the weapons of choice that black marketeers use when fighting over

turf. Legalizing drugs would put an end to turf wars. (Some claim that drugs dealers would continue

to use violence even if drugs were legal, but I doubt it. After all, alcohol was once illegal; when was

the last time you heard of a turf war over alcohol.)

Criminals out on the street due to lack of prison space. Prison space is a finite resource. When you

put a drug user in a cell, you have one less space for a murderer, or a rapist, or some other violent

criminal. By legalizing drugs and granting amnesty to all prisoners whose only crime was drug use

(or possession or trafficking), we would have plenty of space to put the violent criminals– without

raising taxes or building new jails. More violent criminals in jail means fewer on the streets, and

fewer on the streets means safer streets.

How much prison space would be freed. I recall a study done in Florida which showed that of

45,000 prisoners in jail on drug-related charges, 40,000 of them were in solely for drug-related

charges. If that pattern holds for all 50 states, then legalizing drugs would free up hundreds of

thousands of cells which could then be used to house violent criminals. (I’ll try to track down the

source of that study, if anybody’s interested.)

Dealers who use violence to avoid being caught. Currently, dealers have to use violence (or at least

the threat of it) to prevent citizens and police from interferring in their trade. If drugs were legal, there

would be no need to do so.

Legalizing drugs would help to make drug use safer. The War on Drug Users has two side effects that

make drug use even more dangerous than it would normally be. They are:

The Drug War makes it difficult to obtain pure, high-quality samples of the drugs in question. For

one thing, the clandestine nature of drug manufacturing makes it impossible to build a high-quality

facility for making drugs. Instead, drug makers must do their work hurriedly, leading to

carelessness in the manufacturing process. There is no time for quality control procedures or

product testing. Another problem is that high profits that come from the drug trade, coupled with the

fact that most dealers have a near monopoly on their turf, encourages dealers to dilute their drugs

with impurities to increase the number of “servings” that can be made from the same amount of

raw drug. These impurities are often responsible for drug-related deaths, since

The impurities may themselves be toxic,

the impurities may react with the drug to form toxic substances, and

it is impossible to know how much drug (or even which drug, if the dealer uses other drugs

for the dilution) one is taking.

The Drug War has halted all progress towards the creation of safe recreational drugs. For one

thing, the lack of competition in the underground drug manufacturing industry leaves drug makers

with little incentive to improve their product. For another, it is impossible to carry out scientific

research on recreational drugs: No scientist would participate for fear of ruining his or her career,

and it would be impossible to use modern laboratory facilities for doing the research. In an open

market, however, there would be fierce competition among drug manufacturing companies for

customers. A company that could manufacture safe (or at least safer) versions of recreational drugs

would make a fortune. Thus, companies would be strongly motivated to make safer drugs. Further,

since research could be done out in the open, it would be possible to get good researchers and

good facilities to do the job. The end result is that users would have safer drugs to use.

(”Safer” could mean several things in this context. It could

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