The right question on drugs

By Dave Anderson:

Dr. Steve Taylor at Outside the Beltway asks the right question on US drug policy, even slightly improved Obama drug policy --- does it make any sense to continue on this course?

what we have here is a great deal of effort and money being spent so that the cocaine market can still sell drugs at a cheaper price than it did when all of this started.  People die and billions of dollars exchange hands and it is still possible to get drugs in the United States if one really wants them.  So I would ask, does this stand up to a basic cost/benefit analysis?  Yes, I understand very well that drug addiction is bad and that it wrecks lives.  However, that is happening right now in spite of the billions spent.  Indeed, a lot of lives are being ruined because of the drug war.  America�s cocaine habit (and to a lesser degree Europe�s) funds, for example, the FARC in Colombia and the drug violence in Mexico.  Some people are more than willing to engage in all sorts of bad behaviors if they will make a lot of money in the process.  The appetite for cocaine (and other drugs) in the US coupled with prohibition equals a lot of money to be made.  It means, therefore, a lot of violence to protect that money...

The question becomes:  are we getting what we, as a public, think we are getting from the drug war?  Is it worth the cost or should we have a serious public debate about another way of doing business?

Defensive legalization of at least marijuana should be on the table of options that are politically plausible if not yet politically feasible.  We know through our experience with Prohibition that creating mass black-markets for popular, and comparatively simple to make products increases violence, fragments state legitimacy and does some but insufficient reduction in consumption.  Defensive legalization is a policy set that should produce lower net social costs even as consumption of marijuana and potentially other drugs increase.