Pubdate: Tue, 17 Apr 2012
Source: National Post (Canada)
Copyright: 2012 Canwest Publishing Inc.
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/wEtbT4yU
Website: http://www.nationalpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/286
Author: George F. Will

IS LEGALIZING NARCOTICS WORTH IT?

Amelioration of today's drug problem requires Americans to understand
the significance of the 80/20 ratio. Twenty percent of American
drinkers consume 80% of the alcohol sold in the United States. The
same 80-20 split obtains among users of illicit drugs.

About three million people - less than 1% of the United States'
population - consume 80% of illegal hard drugs. Drug trafficking
organizations can be most efficiently injured by changing the
behaviour of the 20% of heavy users, and we are learning how to do so.
Reducing consumption by the 80% of casual users will not substantially
reduce the northward flow of drugs or the southward flow of money.

Consider current policy concerning the only addictive intoxicant
currently available as a consumer good - alcohol. The United States'
alcohol industry, which is as dependent on the 20% of heavy drinkers
as they are on alcohol, markets its products aggressively, and
effectively. Because marketing can drive consumption, American
distillers, brewers and vintners spend $6-billion on advertising and
promoting their products. Americans' experience with marketing's power
inclines them to favour prohibition and enforcement over legalization
and marketing of drugs.

But this choice has consequences: More Americans are imprisoned for
drug offences or drug-related probation and parole violations than for
property crimes. And although the United States spends five times more
jailing drug dealers than it did 30 years ago, the prices of cocaine
and heroin are 80% to 90% lower than 30 years ago.

In Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know, policy analysts 
Mark Kleiman, Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken argue that imprisoning 
low-ranking, street-corner dealers is pointless: A $200 transaction can 
cost society $100,000 for a three-year sentence. And imprisoning large 
numbers of dealers produces an army of people who, emerging from prison 
with blighted employment prospects, can only deal drugs. Which is why, 
although a few years ago Washington, D.C., dealers earned an average of 
$30 an hour, today they earn less than the federal minimum wage ($7.25).

Dealers, a.k.a. ''pushers," have almost nothing to do with initiating
drug use by future addicts; almost every user starts when given drugs
by a friend, sibling or acquaintance. There is a staggering dispar-ity
between the trivial sums earned by dealers who connect the cartels to
the cartels' customers, and the huge sums trying to slow the flow of
drugs to those street-level dealers. Kleiman, Caulkins and Hawken say
that in developed nations, cocaine sells for about $3,000 per ounce -
almost twice the price of gold. And the supply of cocaine, unlike that
of gold, can be cheaply and quickly expanded. But in the countries
where cocaine and heroin are produced, they sell for about 1% of their
retail price in the United States. If cocaine were legalized, a $2,000
kilogram could be Fedexed from Colombia for less than $50 and sold
profitably in America for a small markup from its price in Colombia,
and a $5 rock of crack might cost 25c. Criminalization drives the
cost! of the smuggled kilogram in America up to $20,000. But then it
retails for more than $100,000.

People used to believe enforcement could raise prices but doubted that
higher prices would decrease consumption. Now they know consumption
declines as prices rise but wonder whether enforcement can
substantially affect prices.

They urge rethinking the drug-control triad of enforcement, prevention
and treatment because we have been much too optimistic about all three.

And cartels have oceans of money for corrupting enforcement because
drugs are so cheap to produce and easy to renew. So it is not
unreasonable to consider modifying a policy that gives hundreds of
billions of dollars a year to violent organized crime.

Marijuana probably provides less than 25% of the cartels' revenues.
Legalizing it would take perhaps $10-billion from some bad and violent
people, but the cartels would still make much more money from cocaine,
heroin and methamphetamines than they would lose from marijuana
legalization.

Sixteen states and the District of Columbia have legalized "medical
marijuana," a messy, mendacious semi-legalization that breeds cynicism
regarding law. In 1990, 24% of Americans supported full legalization.
Today, 50% do. In 2010, in California, where one-eighth of Americans
live, 46% of voters supported legalization, and some opponents were
marijuana growers who like the profits they make from prohibition of
their product.

Would the public health problems resulting from legalization be a
price worth paying for injuring the cartels and reducing the costs of
enforcement? We probably are going to find out.
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