Ban Drug Bans
Jacob Sullum writes at reason about the risk premium associated with prohibition, which delivers big profits to murderous thugs all over the world. Check out the markup on meth, quoting a Stratfor primer:
Depending on the price of chemicals used--determined by the quantity of chemicals purchased and the legitimacy of the supplier--the cost of manufacturing 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) of meth comes to anywhere between $150 and $4,000....According to the U.S. Department of Justice's National Illicit Drug Prices Mid-Year 2009 report, the wholesale market price for meth is $19,720 per kilogram while its street value is $87,717 per kilogram. Needless to say, this is a huge markup.
Sullum comments:
Indeed. Based on Stratfor's range of estimates, meth sells for between 20 and 600 times as much as it costs to make, and almost all of that value is added after the drug has been broken down into relatively small quantities--one reason interdiction has little impact on retail price. Stratfor also notes that "since the product can be made anywhere and can be fabricated into a variety of forms, it is very easily transported." Nor is Stratfor sanguine about the prospect of shutting down the market by controlling precursor chemicals such as pseudoephedrine and methylamine.
Meth makers have found their way around that -- they always do.
As Sullum writes:
There's the prohibitionist conundrum in a nutshell: Banning a product people want creates the very incentives that ensure the ban will be ineffective.
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Crid [CridComment at gmail] at March 14, 2012 11:52 PM
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Balko is made of win. Every last bald inch of him.
Banning a product people want creates the very incentives that ensure the ban will be ineffective.
STOP WANTING IT!11!1
Thanks,
The FBI, your local police force, the ATF, FDA and any number of other alphabet soup agencies.
Oh, wait, forget that. We need your arrests to justify our budgets. Snort up!
Christopher at March 15, 2012 12:30 AM
So - legalize meth, so it will be cheaper?
Radwaste at March 15, 2012 2:50 AM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2012/03/15/ban_drug_bans.html#comment-3072220">comment from RadwasteThe attempt to keep meth makers from getting the ingredients to make it only keeps people like me from getting the Adderall and other drugs we are legitimately prescribed.
Amy Alkon at March 15, 2012 6:13 AM
So - legalize meth, so it will be cheaper?
Legalize it as a way of reducing the overall harm it does society.
Christopher at March 15, 2012 10:18 AM
And there's the rub.
Are you really reducing the harm, or just moving it?
Instead of street crime, they instead assault the places where the drugs are made available.
Amy loves to tell stories about "responsible" cocaine users, but I'd wager those are one in a million stories. The bulk of hard drug users are utterly useless as human beings and nothing will stop them from self-destructing.
The only possible public-good argument to be made in favor of decriminalization is that we won't be spending so much money on the DEA and the cops. But the drug problems and violence will never go away.
brian at March 15, 2012 10:29 AM
Well, a small bag of meth sells for 1000x its cost of manufacture, ie production, transport, drug raids, cash seizures, thefts by adicts and rivail dealers, distribution, ect
So if we leagalzed it and let phizer sell it, it would probly cost less than 5 bucks to get enought to OD 10 times over
You could probably get enough for you and 5 freinds to get high on 25 cents
Cuts down on theft, cuts down on gun runing, cuts down on funding to private mexican drug armies
Cuts down on meth addicts as the product is so pure and so cheap that they wosrt of the worst kill themselves off
Whats the downside Rad?
lujlp at March 15, 2012 6:03 PM
Are you really reducing the harm, or just moving it?
I think this is an empirical question, and suggests an experiment we should run. I'm not certain it is right. I have seen no other drug wreak havoc on lives the way that meth does. I know a number of people who can do coke occasionally, do E occasionally, smoke pot sometimes (these are not all the same people) as part of a happy, healthy and productive lifestyle. Speed scares me, as I've seen it shred people.
But the illegality of these things, combined with our nation's apparently insatiable demand for them has created an awful situation in countries south of us, particularly Mexico, and these problems are going to increasingly spill over into the U.S. Our project manager for the Spanish language version of our site is in Monterrey, and his internet connection is on a tower that the cartels have blown up.
But the drug problems and violence will never go away.
Have rates of alcoholism and mob violence gone up since the end of Prohibition?
Christopher at March 15, 2012 11:01 PM
"Have rates of alcoholism and mob violence gone up since the end of Prohibition?"
You just answered brian's question.
The mob violence was moved to killing tens of thousands of Americans per year in direct alcohol-related death and huge ancillary costs, while government and corporations rake in $$ and the citizenry parties on, confident that nothing bad can happen to them.
Radwaste at March 16, 2012 9:05 AM
How about a bounty on meth dealers?
Jeff Guinn at March 16, 2012 11:37 AM
Nothing new here. The same invisible hand that put a butcher shop on a corner near Adam Smith's home, will put a dope dealer near yours if there's a similar demand for his services.
No government can defeat a natural law.
John David Galt at March 16, 2012 6:42 PM
Those who care about you, or you yourself, can seek sobriety. I as a citizen can step over or step up when I see you laying on the sidewalk.
As the current system is setup -- you can seek SSI, Medicated and other social programs regardless of the amount of drugs you continue to use.
Jim P. at March 16, 2012 10:30 PM
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