Political Crossfire Forums

If people wanna do drugs then let them. With a bit of luck legalising them would eventually take them away from the criminal gangs and cartels, ensure they aren't cut with nasty shit and of course the government could get its grubby hands on tax dollars from it. It's all win as far as I'm concerned.

Also I could exploit desperate addicts and become rich.

Otto Perez Molina is a frikin hero to the world if he manages to pull that off without getting smoked by the cartels.

The problem is that the precedent for this is not good. When the US ended prohibition the criminal groups didn't all become law abiding citizens, they just used their vast wealth to move into other criminal areas (and actually if anything caused more problems).

I don't see why anybody would think that legalising drugs is going to do much to help Central American states in tackling organised crime. All of the cartels will still exist but will then diversify and make people's lives even more miserable.

What criminal enterprise could these gangs enter that even comes close to the size of the illegal drug trade?

Yes, the question is.

How?

I had the misfortune to live in one of the most heroin ridden neighborhoods in Europe recently. Whilst prohibition is going nothing good there. To make it legal, by just completely dropping inforcement would increase the supply to a point where there would be a public health disaster within a few days. The same people would be in charge of supply also.

So yes, we can have another thread which is perhaps one person saying it shouldn't be done for the kids and everyone else congratulating each other on being enlightened. But part of the reason why more people involved in justice and public health arn't pushing hard to question the status quo is the extremely important question 'ok so what happens on day zero?'

I'm of the opinion, with most of the 'hard' that is to say medically harmful and highly addictive stuff, you'd need to have a huge, huge social welfare and public health campaign to address addiction in the worst cases years before, least legalization simply reduce to writing people off.

And the only way to completely pull the rug out from under the stairwell barons of the various ghettos' through major cities, would be to introduce a controlled most likely government supply on day zero of legalization.

Not quite the libertarian dream im afraid.