Cocaine is having a better year than the Dow Jones industrial average
Says Jonathan Berr:
People who are opposed to the legalization of drugs should consider the following: cocaine is having a better year than the stock market. This fun fact courtesy of WallStreetFighter paints a very grim picture of the War on Drugs. Addicts are paying more for less-pure Bolivian marching powder. From January through June, the average price per gram of domestic cocaine purchases rose 24% from $95.89 to $118.70, while purity fell. Retail (involving 10 grams or more) prices rose 15% while “mid-level” wholesale prices surged 33% and wholesale (1 kilogram or more) prices jumped 11%.
Unlike most products, cocaine really does sell itself as does pornography. Lots of people — mostly really bad people — are getting rich off drugs. Why shouldn’t the federal government? Researcher Jon Gettman estimates that the government loses $31.1 billion in taxes because of the prohibition against marijuana, according to the Marijuana Policy Project. You can bet that the figures would be similar for cocaine.
Imagine how much money Uncle Sam could reap if he taxed cocaine or marijuana? What does the War on Drugs cost? Hundreds of millions? That money could be used to fund a real war on drugs — treating addicts whose lives have been destroyed.
Click here for the original article.
Regardless of how you feel about the government taxing drugs like Cocaine, it’s a fact that making them illegal doesn’t make them go away. What it does, however, is create black markets with no legal means of arbitration. How do you enforce contracts without a legal means of arbitration? With violence, of course. It’s simple. If I’m your dealer and I lend (or “front”) you drugs at a certain interest rate, the only way to make sure you pay me back by threatening violence. That is, you know that if you don’t somehow pay me back, I’ll physically harm you or a family member. Drug laws cause violence and inspire organized crime.
Before heroin was illegal, a bunch of people bought it from pharmacies and went home and got high. “Gang epidemics” and drive-by shootings are the creation of the Drug War.
Drug laws are designed to fight natural economic laws that can’t be stopped. It’s no less absurd than trying to legislate against any other natural law, including gravity. Imagine a politician promoting a War on Gravity because thousands die each year from falling off of ladders. No matter how much money the federal government pours into rocket boosters for the elderly, gravity obviously isn’t going to go away. It would be a total waste of money. Why do we view legislation that is supposed to fight other natural laws as being any less absurd?