There must a word for it. Every once in a while I run across an argument that if we implement some extreme form of some program or other that all sorts of benefits would flow from it. That’s frequently the argument that anarcho-capitalists make. If we just get rid of all laws and government other than what’s necessary to enforce contracts, think how great it would be!
Most recently I’ve heard the same sort of claims made about drug legalization. We need to end the “War on Drugs” (by which they mean the legalization of all Schedule 1 drugs). Think of all the resources that won’t be squandered on police and prisons and all of the people who won’t be encarcerated!
The problem with all of these utopian plans is that only when the most extreme version is implemented will the benefits accrue. Take the case of ending the “War on Drugs”. There is no prospect whatever that all Schedule 1 drugs will be legalized and with anything less than that there will still be a war on drugs. Drug dealers will continue to be sentenced to prison terms and police will still be needed to enforce the laws.
As a matter of social policy I think we should legalize the possession and personal use of marijuana to bring the law into line with what’s actually happening in the country. Resign ourselves to reality. However, it should be recognized that even in states where marijuana has been legalized it continues to be illegal to give or sell it to minors (widely considered the bulk of the market).
Ironically, that would just be bringing the laws on marijuana into line with the laws on alcohol during Prohibition. Personal use and possession of alcohol was never illegal and individuals were allowed to make beer and wine for their and their family’s use.
The War on Drugs did not make drugs illegal. It made them a way to make money for many police departments and cities. Civil forfeiture, federal grants, military surplus, etc. are all based upon drug arrests, and a bigger drug problem increases the revenue.
The truth is that many people who want to legalize drugs as a solution to the problems in poor black areas just want to keep poor black people out of their area.
You’re right. They had been illegal for the better part of a century when the “War on Drugs” started. The reason the “War on Drugs” was begun was because there was a real problem that was beginning to affect middle class neighborhoods. It may be that it has been continued for the reasons you cite.
It’s the Nirvana fallacy: “The view that now pervades much public policy economics implicitly presents the relevant choice as between an ideal norm and an existing “imperfect” institutional arrangement. This nirvana approach differs considerably from a comparative institution approach in which the relevant choice is between alternative real institutional arrangements.” (Harold Demsetz)
Current drug laws are creating substantial problems, so we should get rid of all drug laws. People would no longer commit crimes, we would have all of this money from taxing drugs to the heavens, taxpayors will gladly give financial support for victims of addiction, and young children will no longer look to gangs as a way of life, but start up new businesses in underprivileged communities.
That sounds right, PD. Thanks.
In this particular instance it’s also coupled with the claim that “Prohibition didn’t work”. Prohibition worked unless you think that its objective was to eliminate any consumption of alcohol which an informed reading of the statute would clear up immediately.
That Prohibition brought with it unforeseen secondary effects that were worse than the ill it was intended to solve is a reasonable argument. That it didn’t work is not.
“individuals were allowed to make beer and wine for their and their family’s use”
Still are, if I’m not mistaken. Two hundred gallons a year — this is the fed law, but state law may control.
Drug-decriminalization in Baltimore:
“While Baltimore’s industry and finance were in steep decline, crime was on the rise—thanks, in large measure, to [Mayor] Schmoke’s ineffective policing strategy, described by City Journal as a “soft-on-drugs†approach. Insisting that drug use was a health problem rather than a criminal-justice matter, Schmoke largely decriminalized it. The consequences were enormous. By the end of the 1990s, the murder rate in Baltimore was six times higher than in New York (where a variety of proactive policing practices had reduced violent crime dramatically). Throughout the Nineties, Baltimore was the scene of more than 300 murders every year, prompting locals to nickname their city—which had become the second-deadliest in the nation—“Bodymore, Murderland.†Approximately 75% of Baltimore’s killings were drug-related—symptoms of an ongoing, brutal drug-turf war that was allowed to engulf many nonwhite neighborhoods. Police, meanwhile, were frustrated by the fact that those drug dealers they arrested were routinely released a short time later, as a result of Schmoke’s “philosophy,†free to resume their criminal activities on the streets. One police sergeant lamented that under Schmoke’s leadership, Baltimore had become a city “in love with its own victimhood.†. . .[N]early 10% of Baltimore’s population was addicted to drugs, and epidemics of heroin and cocaine abuse reached levels unmatched in virtually any other American city.”
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=1889