The Economics Of Drug Prohibition And Drug Legalization Essay

Improved Essays
As if the consequences of alcohol prohibition could not be forgotten soon enough, the 1970s unshackled the ‘safety at any cost’ mentality of policymakers in Washington with a regained sense of restrictive goodwill. Yes, a land world renowned for its respect of individual rights reinstituted coercive public policy historically marred with disaster and unintended consequences. The government of the United States, yet again in denial of bodily autonomy, demonized another inanimate object in an unfortunately familiar fashion. What was alcohol in the 1920s became drugs in the 1970s and 1980s. Instead of respecting individuals’ right to determine what is best for their own lives, the government prohibited the use of these narcotic substances again …show more content…
Economist Jeffrey Miron agrees. He too recognizes the subjective nature of human values. His article on public economics, The Economics of Drug Prohibition and Drug Legalization, supplements Menger’s arguments within the context of drug prohibition. While it is obvious that human values are subjective, it is also true that these subjective values drive human action and behavior. Desires (or needs or wants) are prioritized in an ordinal ranking of value; the mind hierarchy ranks what it wants. These ordinal values are subjective. When this is realized, it becomes apparent that those who voluntarily consume drugs value the drugs more than the risks associated with breaking the law. For this reason, neither a utopian philosopher nor a government can reasonably assume that all consumers in an established market will simply change their values based on government action or will (Miron 838). Then again, we are talking about the …show more content…
A market monopolized by underground suppliers is inherently violent; as such, prohibition facilitates the violence in several major ways. Number one, underground markets have no legal mechanism to settle disputes and therefore resort to violent means. In any marketplace, legal or otherwise, disputes arise between producers and consumers, multiple competitors, or any combination in between. In a legal market, where the buyers and sellers are free to trade openly, disputes are usually settled in court (or through a certain type of legally binding arbiter). Violence is averted through the courts and the legal system. In an underground marketplace, however, this is not the case. Buyers, sellers, and competitors have no legal and inherently non-violent way to settle their disputes. These disputes often lead to violence as the only means of resolution (for the purpose of historical precedence, the same consequence occurred during the prohibition of alcohol). Number two, underground markets must protect their sales from the police department. As an organization that uses force to solidify their authority and enforce the rule of law, the police department uses violence and

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Making the empirical assumption that drugs inhibit users’ ability to control themselves, prohibitionists might argue that the government is obligated to restrict the use of drugs—or at least addictive ones—in the interest of preserving…

    • 704 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Throughout its history, the United States of America has undergone many social experiments. Many of them have worked brilliantly, and transformed our country into the world power it is today. Others, however, have failed so spectacularly, we today wonder: “What were we thinking?” Not the least of these was prohibition, America’s botched attempt to ban alcohol. Created in 1919, the 18th Amendment made it illegal to manufacture, transport, possess, or sell alcoholic beverages (hook), and the later Volstead act helped to strengthen the ideals behind the amendment.…

    • 742 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Though president Nixon is often seen as having started the modern war on drugs, his administration’s actual role in drug policy legislation and enforcement never lived up to the inflated rhetoric surrounding the issue. The war on drugs, from a policy standpoint, was largely created under the Reagan administration. Despite having fewer than 2% of the American public reporting that they believed drugs were the most important issue the country faced (Alexander, 2010 p. 49), the Reagan administration announced its war on drugs in 1982. Unlike Nixon’s rhetorical war on drugs, the Reagan administration began creating impactful laws and enforcement mechanisms. Beginning by transferring funds from drug education and drug treatment programs into drug related enforcement mechanisms was only a small indicator of what was to come next.…

    • 1021 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    What should be allowed in America? Drugs have become very big items these days, either being used for medical reasons or just for fun, they are extremely common. As known, most drugs are illegal; however, people have connections to others to be able to get these illegal drugs to play around with and get high off of. Although, individuals with diseases or illnesses may benefit from illegal drugs to counteract the effects of their sickness, so the questions then comes up- should drug sales and usage be legalized? In the article “Drug Policy and the Intellectuals” by William J. Bennett, he plays off both sides whether or not drugs should be legalized.…

    • 1214 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Prohibition: Thirteen Years That Changed America, by Edward Behr, gives a detailed account of an era where the United States learned that one really does not appreciate what they have until it is gone. Alcohol was always the American pastime, since before the revolution. Behr vividly describes from the time where America was in its beginnings and alcohol was used for medicinal purposes, then when aversion began to grow against “intoxicating beverages”, and finally to that fateful night on January 16th, 1920, when the United States went dry. Of course, thirteen years later on December 5th, 1933, the 18th Amendment was repealed due to overwhelming protest, and to this day stands as the only Amendment in American history to be retracted. Edward Behr wrote several novels before his 2007 death in Paris at age eighty-one and was a famed war correspondent.…

    • 1186 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In recent years, the war on drugs in America has become a growing problem. In William Bennett’s paper, “Drug Policy and the Intellectuals”, he stresses the issue of “intellectuals” ignorantly becoming advocates of legalization. He talks about how changes in current drug policies would help stunt the growing drug epidemic, saving people from loosing their personalities and lives to drugs. Lastly, he suggests that legalization would give the government, and therefore the people, a fat receipt to pay for. There is a country, Portugal, that decriminalized the use of drugs.…

    • 1039 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Satire On Drugs

    • 724 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Drug laws play a vital role in American society because drug use is an unfortunate part of the culture. Regardless of one’s views on whether some currently illegal drugs should be treated differently than others, the fact is that at this point all non-prescription drugs are illegal, and the government is responsible for responding to public outcry on this issue whether it be the legalization of recreational drugs like marijuana or the perceived injustices handed down to non-violent drug offenders. The serious nature of our country’s drug epidemic makes the topic of drug laws one that must be addressed by all branches of the US Government; the President is calling for legalization of recreational marijuana, congress is passing groundbreaking…

    • 724 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Going hand in hand with the mass incarceration of African-Americans is current their disenfranchisement. According to Michelle Alexander, this new Jim Crow has “disenfranchised [more] today than in 1870, the year the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified prohibiting laws that explicitly deny the rights to vote on the basis of race” (Alexander, 2011, p. 180). All but three states have some type of law prohibiting prisoners or even individuals who served their full sentences from voting in elections (Chung, 2015) so with African Americans being the largest group imprisoned, it also makes them the largest group that is disenfranchised.…

    • 1745 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In Douglas Husak’s “Why We Should Decriminalize Drug Use”, he states that all drugs should be decriminalized. The strongest argument that I believe Husak gives in this article is that there is not a better reason to criminalize any drug other than prediction and correlation, and we cannot restrict individual liberties because of a prediction or correlation to a social issue. I will show an objection to this using Mill’s Harm Principle, and further show my support that heroin and cocaine should be decriminalized and not be kept illegal. Laws regarding the use of heroin and cocaine are paternalistic and interfere with the liberty of mentally competent adults.…

    • 870 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In reviewing other countries drug policies, Portugal has found an answer to the drug epidemic. Previously, Portugal was spending millions and getting nowhere. In the 90’s drug problems increased significantly. “In 1991, 4,667 people were arrested for drug offenses.…

    • 1596 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Employment was rare and the common citizen needed to accommodate their families, gangster-ism was unsafe however gave a simple approach to profit. At the point when the American government passed the Eighteenth changes banning liquor, those who indulged in alcohol were branded as criminals. It was organized criminal organizations who supplied the alcohol. In January of 1920 the American government banned the distribution and sale of liquor, the administration imagined that this would lessen crime and violence, however it had the opposite effect, it gave rise to more crime and bloodshed that would have been possible before this law was enacted. Liquor was seen as the “Devil's Advocate” and banning the substance would help enhance American lives.…

    • 491 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Despite the lack of attention on the topic, the role that women played during the Prohibition Movement in the early 1900’s goes well beyond surface level protests and advocating. Women may very well be the driving force behind the installment of the Eighteenth Amendment as well as its repeal thirteen years after its inauguration. The results of their activism both for and against the Prohibition Movement are still seen in our society today and impacted the direction of our nation economically and socially from the end of that era onward. The role of women in the Era of Prohibition truly started to take form in the early nineteenth century when a handful of women involved in the Protestant church began to protest alcohol.…

    • 1410 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Huemer’s essay presents not just a series of arguments for ending the war on drugs, but goes as far as arguing for full legalization of recreational drugs. His strongest moral argument for drug legalization is that individuals have a natural right to use drugs stemming from the right to exercise control over their own bodies. Although he doesn’t cite other philosophers, Huemer’s argument builds on John Locke’s basic assumption in “Of Property.” Locke wrote, “…every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself.”…

    • 595 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Taking hard drugs slowly kills the mind and the body. For example with cocaine, short term hallucinations over time can lead to having a stroke or death. Drugs take a large toll on the body and they could cause harm to people around a user of them. But unfortunately, because of our justice system, drugs occasionally drag innocent people into court. Even acquiring miniscule amounts of drugs can ruin lives.…

    • 990 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The drug market is stronger than ever, yet the drug war has been in full force for several decades. The effects here in the United States, are quite similar to the effects internationally, but there are many solutions other than a drug war, to stop the use of drugs. Nobel laureate and economist Milton Friedman remarked on the issue, “However much harm drugs do to those who use them…seeking to prohibit their use does even more harm both to users of drugs and to the rest of us…Legalizing drugs would simultaneously reduce the amount of crime and improve law enforcement. It is hard to conceive of any other single measure that would accomplish so much to promote law and order” (Donohue 146). Friedman is right.…

    • 1405 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays