What else would Decrease the High American Murder Rate? Part 14 in The Right Response?

Illegal Drugs Increase Violence
Illegal drugs have caused a significant increase in violence. In the years since Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala hardened their stance on illegal drugs, their violent death body counts have risen dramatically.

When you encourage illegal activity by providing more opportunities for criminals to make a profit, there's more competition among criminals for that profit. Since the activity is illegal, resolving disputes using the justice system is denied. So disagreements among criminals can only be settled violently. Eliminate the profit provided by illegal drugs, and you'll also eliminate many violent deaths.

In the USA, the Economist* estimates that Drug convictions account for almost half of American prisoners in federal jails. Yet the “war on drugs” is being convincingly won by the powerful criminal gangs who deal in drugs, not by the government!

States such as Colorado and Washington understand these issues. Voters have approved initiatives that legalize marijuana for adult use. However, the Federal government continues its attempts to enforce its unconstitutional drug laws, see earlier article on the value of the 10th Amendment in this series.

Illegal Drugs Ruin Many Lives
Illegal drugs ruin enormous numbers of lives, throw enormous numbers in prison, and cause immense numbers of gun deaths. Wouldn't it make sense to discourage people from starting on drugs in the first place?

The enormous profits to be made provide significant motivation to lure young children into using drugs. Remove the profit and then the criminal incentives to encourage children to try drugs in the first place also vanish.

When the laws making alcohol illegal were eliminated, the murder rate in America went down, and politicians had a new source of income - alcohol taxes. The lesson is clear, much the same will happen when drugs are regulated instead of illegal.

Eliminate the Incentive to Start Your Child on Illegal Drugs!
Somebody persuaded each and every drug user to try a drug for the first time. If you eliminate that person's ability to make money by doing so, you remove his motivation to persuade. The lack of profit will result in fewer people starting on drugs.

Illegal drugs, according to some estimates, are now the third most lucrative industry in the world, funneling a staggering amount of money to criminals. Removing the illegal profits would also lower crime; users would need to commit less burglaries to obtain money for their drug habit. The evidence comes from countries such as Portugal and Denmark who have decriminalized drugs.

The Drug war has Failed
More than forty years after US President Nixon declared the war on drugs, hoping it would result in a drug-free world, that war is now widely seen as un-winnable**. The UN estimates there are around 250 million drug users worldwide, and illegal drugs are now the world's third largest industry, estimated to approach half a trillion dollars - $500,000,000,000 - a year, all un-taxable, all in the hands of criminals.

Drugs finance the fundamentalist Taliban and their murderous agenda of converting or eliminating every non-believer in Islam. They're naïve believers who misinterpret the Koran's basic message of love as instructing them to create an Islamic-only world.

According to many luminaries, including former US President Carter, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, and many other household names, the war on drugs is a total failure.

It's difficult to appreciate why some people are so adamant they are right. They ignore the abundant evidence of failure all around them, continue to self sabotage, and want yet more effort into the war on drugs. They ignore the lessons the USA learned from alcohol prohibition many years ago.

Why Continue Failing Policies?
Assuming drug ban advocates do know how to examine facts critically, there would seem to be few rational answers to continue the war on drugs. One alarming reason may be that those recommending such failed policies benefit in some way from the illegal drug trade themselves. Could any of our politicians be surreptitiously corrupt?

Another is that they have suffered with someone close using drugs and, ignoring the evidence, think that even stricter laws would be effective. They ignore the conclusive strength of the profit motivation, as well as ignore the fact that drugs were already illegal when that close someone initially got hooked on drugs.

Maybe they are being right, they have too much ego invested in their current anti-drug stance to allow themselves to explore the evidence rationally, admit to being wrong and then changing their minds.

Some assume they already know the solution. Why waste energy on exploring the facts when you already know them? Mark Twain succinctly explains this below.

Others confound believing with thinking. Could Britain's Piers Morgan be in this category? He seems to be attempting career suicide by his vituperative emotional attacks on his guests. He vehemently defends what he just believes rather than look objectively at the facts to make up his own mind.

A sixth alternative is they confuse good intentions with effective strategies. Despite their obvious natural assumption, they don't actually know how to think for themselves. Vehement denials and emotional attacks are indicative here. Yet more evidence of government failure and a government-controlled education system which teaches what to think rather than how to think.

There seem to be many willing to ignore the mountains of incontrovertible empirical evidence. But are any other conclusions tenable? How many of those who insisting the drug war would work with even more effort actually profit from drugs remaining illegal?

© Copyright worldwide Cris Baker, www.LifeStrategies.net All rights reserved. Republishing welcomed under Creative Commons noncommercial no derivatives license preserving all links intact, so please +1 and share this widely!

Food for Thought
"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."

- Mark Twain (1835-1910), gifted American author, incisive political outlook, brilliant humor!

"I learned that you have to evaluate the effects of public policy as opposed to intentions."

Professor Walter E. Williams, PhD; influential African-American economist; John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics, George Mason University.

* The Economist explores legalizing drugs at:

http://www.economist.com/news/international/21572184-experiments-legalis...

** The International Centre for Science in Drug Policy video on the failure of the drug war:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=91y9KqvVggY

*** The PBS article about Illegal drugs and their huge profit margins:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/special/math.html