Ok, already, hold onto your horses. I have not given up on libertarianism. Nor have I finally, and entirely, succumbed to Alzheimer’s disease. It is just that because all of us who favor economic freedom oppose drug prohibition, the contentious part of my personality naturally looks around for factors on the other side of this debate.
That, as well as the reality that I had the unfortunate expertise in a recent conference I attended of hearing a supposed libertarian “defend” drug legalization; he did so in such a manner that I did not have to be particularly quarrelsome or defensive about libertarianism to oppose him. Moreover, the fact that this seminar was constructed in such a manner that I was not in a position to publicly criticize the outrageous case he provided made it all the more necessary that I somehow understand this off my chest. You, gentle reader, will have to stand in for the audience I might have otherwise addressed.
So, do you know the reasons, in general, for maintaining the status quo regarding the prohibition of addictive substances?
1. Without it law, our movies, television programming, plays, novels and other vehicles of story telling would be a lot much less enriched than description of how the are. Award winning television series for example Law and Order and The Sopranos would be particularly challenging hit by repeal. It’s an exaggeration to say that programming of this ilk contains nothing but this motif, although not by much. Surely, the vast majority of the themes explored in the cops and robbers genre rely on the fact that there’s a black market in marijuana, cocaine and heroin.
2. Had been addictive materials to become legalized a whole host of jobs could be lost. (Look, I said I’d give factors in support of prohibition; I did not say I would give high quality ones in this regard. As far as I am concerned, there aren’t any very good factors. I am willing to defend the “undefendable,” but this isn’t undefendable.) We are talking, here, about judges, policemen, jail guards, social workers, lawyers, district attorneys, social workers, psychologists, munitions makers, small planes and boats, etc. bloody etc. Can it be that one of the strongest reasons for the retention of this horrid law is self identical truth? I wonder. Not, obviously, that jobs are needed. That is the unfortunate legacy of Keynes and Keynesianism. As every single Austrian from Mises to Hazlitt to Rothbard indicates, it really is not rational to develop jobs merely for the sake of creating jobs. We could all be employed digging ditches and filling them in once more, and would starve consequently. No, the whole point of jobs is to produce goods and services of value, and those that come about as a result of drug prohibition hardly qualify.
What, then, are the obnoxious factors provided by this “libertarian” in behalf of drug legalization?
3. The present drug laws bring about an over-all disrespect for law and order, which is something to be greatly regretted. But this is highly problematic from the libertarian perspective. Thousands? Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? But how various laws exist nowadays? This is hard to decide. Possibly nobody knows to an exactitude, even as of any given date (you’ll find brand new ones coming on board every single day). It depends upon regardless of whether or not administrative decisions should be counted; and why not? If so, laws presumably number within the millions. Literally.
And, of these, how countless are very good laws, e.g., enactments suitable for the libertarian axiom of non-aggression? Well, let’s wait and watch. You will find laws against murder, theft, trespass, fraud, kidnapping, assault and battery, rape… I am speedily running out of examples. Well, I suppose we can pick up a few extra, possibly, from the Ten Commandments; and defense of contracts from the civil law. But which is about this.
So, it is pro libertarian to advertise a general respect for law? Hardly. Virtually all law is poor law. Only an infinitesimal percentage of law is great law. Respecting law in general, then, would be to promote evil. How, then, are we to regard favoring the repeal of drug laws on the ground that they reduce respect for law in general? Whatever else might be said about this contention, it can not be claimed that it’s compatible with libertarianism.
4. The economist continues and on, ad nauseum, about how he as an economist needs data for public policy analysis. With out information, he never tires of telling us, it’s impossible to create an informed choice whether or not addictive substances ought to be legalized.
But this is stuff and nonsense. Whether or not drugs should really be prohibited legally is really a matter of normative economics. Information, in stark contrast, is a component and parcel of positive economics. To be certain, in some moral systems, e.g., utilitarianism, the second is not irrelevant to the former. As well as the deontological libertarian, it comes down to a matter of rights. Does the (adult) individual need to correct to inject into his body whatever he pleases, harmful or not? Plus the answer is, naturally he is doing.
It is a lot more than passing curious that this economics professor, after recounting involve information, and bewailing its absence, nevertheless takes the pro-legalization side of the debate. Perhaps the statistics are not that needed after all.
5. According to the speaker at this conference I am criticizing, the market price of a pound of marijuana is presently about $3,000. He estimates how the total costs under legalization will be some thing of the order of $3 per pound. Thus, the net income (plus the black marketplace costs, considering the fact that this market is illegal) quantity to some $2,997, or 99.9% from the total.
This speaker “doesn’t like” the people who are presently enjoying this differential. He favors legalization, so they will no longer have access to these funds. He full well realizes that when and if the government legalizes this product, it’ll tax the stuffing out of it, just as it presently does in the instances of booze and tobacco. He provides up to now an additional reason for legalizing marijuana this will, in 1 fell swoop, go ahead and take profits away from the present producers.
Now I full well sympathize with this professor’s assessment of your typical denizen from the drug market. He is mean and vicious, fully willing and able to make use of violence against police, competitors, sometimes even customers. It’s thanks to him and his confreres that we have a new word to describe innocent victims of drug gang warfare: “mushrooms.” His method is oft-time poisonous, plus the dosage uncertain. They are altogether a pretty despicable lot of men and women. Naturally, as is popular inside the libertarian community, these characteristics stem, entirely, in the illegal status of drugs. During alcohol prohibition, the proprietors had been much like today’s drug dealers. Nowadays, under legalization of beer, wine and liquor, the purveyors are indistinguishable from people who manufacture cheese or chalk.
The number of innocent folks have all the drug gangs on the planet murdered? A couple of hundred? A couple of thousand? Several tens of thousands? In comparison, according to R. J. Rummel, Death By Government (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1996), governments have the effect of killing no fewer than about 170 million that belongs to them residents and citizens in the 20th century; we are talking non-combatants here. This economist wants data? Here is information. What can we say about the moral status of a commentator who favors a public policy (partially) on the ground that a gang responsible for a family member handful of deaths will probably be missing out on financial resources, and that they will be given to a distinctive gang of persons who have killed millions?
Yes, go ahead and, let us legalize drugs. (I said I’m still a libertarian). And, perhaps, our plays and movies might be much less dramatic. But there won’t be any gain from decriminalization concerning jobs, or respect for law, or superior allocation of funds from drug gang to government gang.
