Au Contraire: Drug Legalization Is The Titanic Times The Hindenburg, Part I

Bloghost Borepatch has upped the ante in the recent back and forth on drug laws etc.

From today's offering on the topic on his blog:

"But in the interest of putting my pixels where my mouth is, let me take a stab at providing answers to these questions from the "we should declare victory in the War on Drugs and go home" perspective.  The proposal is that most or perhaps all drugs be decriminalized, offered for sale, and taxed.

Rule #1. Can the person proposing the law state what they think the law will accomplish? This is intended to accomplish five specific things: 

1. Remove the perceived need to militarization of the police forces, no-knock raids, asset forfeiture, controls on how much you can deposit at your bank, etc.  It's caustic for the Republic and it costs us a lot of money.  It's an anti-tyranny goal.
2. Improve the purity of the drugs on the market which will reduce overdose deaths.  Food and Drug purity laws would apply and so the heroin that Joe Junkie buys at the local Alcohol Beverage and Drug Emporium wouldn't be the equivalent of bathtub gin.  His gin isn't adulterated (like it was during the Prohibition days) and his smack shouldn't be either.
3. Lower the price of drugs, by eliminating the risk premium that must exist to cover expected loss from seizure, arrest, etc.  
4. Eliminate the massive profits that are flowing to drug cartels, which fund a bunch (admittedly not all) of the violence associated with illegal drug use.
5. Generate a tax revenue stream that can be targeted towards providing detox centers for drug users who want to fight their addiction.

Laws about theft, driving under the influence, etc would fully apply to junkies who commit these crimes, just as they do today.  Peter, Aesop, and Bill are entirely correct that today these are not "victimless" crimes.


Rule #2. Can the person proposing the law state how likely the law is to accomplish the goal from Rule #1? Let's break these down like the five points above. 

1. No doubt some agencies will resist this -police unions, prison guard unions, the DEA, etc will rightly see the reduction of public funding as a threat to them. However this is more of a hindrance to getting decriminalization passed in Congress than in implementation. In any case I don't see any fundamental disagreement between the two camps in this as a goal.  

2. It seems like a no-brainer, as the illegal drug market is replaced by a legal one. It will be safer for both sellers and users, and legalization will probably attract big corporations who know how to mass produce pure products, I'm not sure you'll see Superbowl ads for "The Champagne of heroin" but I don't think you need to for success here. 

3. This seems like an absolute no-brainer. You are eliminating some very costly parts of the supply chain (machine guns, private armies, etc.) Not sure how big this is but it sure isn't zero.
4. We saw this with the end of Prohibition. Today's Al capons are drug king pins.
5. Tax Money is extremely fungible and is often diverted by politicians, but we see tax revenue streams from legal pot in places where it was legalized (e.g. Colorado.)

So there you have it. I may be wrong here, but at least I've shown my work (in admittedly excessive detail). I'd like to see the same analysis from the other camp on what specifically they would do, and whether they expect it would work."

Challenge accepted, and the format is acceptable. But that will be Part II, i.e. the post after this one.
Our entire object in this post will be to demonstrate, Godzilla-like, why Bambi's object is pie in the sky,

delivered on Luft Zeppelin Hindenburg circa May 1937 in Lakehurst, New Jersey.

The proposal was honestly offered, and it gives us no joy to have to demonstrate its flaws in a blazing hydrogen explosion.

1) "The proposal is that most or perhaps all drugs be decriminalized, offered for sale, and taxed."
Okay. So acetyl carfentanil? Garage-cooked, thousands or tens of thousands of times more lethal than heroin, where a dose the size of three grains of salt is LD50 (i.e. a dose that will kill outright 50% of all persons coming into contact with it). Including cops, firefighters, paramedics and EMTs, doctors, nurses, and techs in the hospital, and oh yeah, kids anywhere, from the addicts' homes to the least staff member.
Take a look at the bottom of your everyday shoes, then imagine mine, and those three grains of salt, then tracking miniscule amounts of that residue onto the carpet at home.

And PCP?
LSD?
Rohyphnol?
GHB?
Speedballs?
Crack cocaine?
Methamphetamine?
Substances so bereft of utility they're in DEA Schedule I.
What could possibly go wrong there?
I mean, besides placing them where others could accidentally or purposely ingest them, or come into contact with them, die, experience flashbacks for life, be date-raped, etc.
Because principles means my right to date rape you trumps your right not to be.

Paint cans are now in locked counters because addicts will huff that too. And cans of air.
It's almost as hard to buy cold medicine as it is to buy a gun in most states.
Next will be baking flavor extracts that are 90-proof. So you'll be getting rid of those legal items? Unlocking them and putting them back on the shelves for kids? Adding to them??

Lay out for me how and why it should be easier to get heroin than Sudafed or Krylon.

2) Aesop, you @$$hole, you're cherry-picking those to bolster your Anti-Drug argument! We'll still ban those drugs, of course.

Ah. I see. So you'll still need a DEA. And ICE. And DHS. And no-knock warrants. And talking drug dogs. And road blocks. And cavity searches. And sealed search warrants. Lots of cops. Toting lots of guns. Kicking down doors. And, of course, Billion$ and Billion$ of dollars to fight that War On Drugs you're totally against continuing for one second longer.

Got it, thanks. Wait, what???

Have no fear, Gentle Reader, we may have decapitated that horse, pulled its living guts out, tied them to a semi-truck axle, and wound them around it in fifth gear, but we haven't yet begun to beat this ex-horsey to death yet.

3) So, you're going to sell drugs? How novel. The cartels will....what??
Sit on their hands and watch you eat their lunch, and rob their pockets?
Because it's the law?
Srsly??
Let's look at how that trick is going to work.
Day One: Joe's Drug Emporium opens in Smallville.
9:02 AM: "Say, this is a nice drug emporium you've got here. It would sure be a shame if it burnt to the ground, and your kids got their knees broken with hammers, and then burglars raped your wife in front of you and sawed your kids heads off while you both watched. Wouldn't it?"
9:03 AM Joe's Drug Emporium announces it's going out of business, forever.
Day Two: Fred's Dope Mart opens for business.
9:17 AM Two men in ski masks rob the store, take all the cash, all the drugs, and shoot Fred in the back, leaving him paralyzed for life.
Day Three: Bubba Joe's Feelgood Corner Pharmacy opens for business.
Learning from Joe and Fred, Bubba Joe has four heavily-armed guards at all times.
This drives up his cost of doing business, so his dope costs double what untaxed illegal dope from the cartels costs. And the cartels flood his neighborhood with it by the ton, to drive him under. Which it does. They can sell ten times his product at half the price, indefinitely, just to drive out competition, like a WalMart eating up all the retail business in a rural county, and crushing the competition from pure capitalism, before they even get to more nefarious schemes.
After that, no one tries to compete with them, because by fair means or foul, they'll drive out all competition.

And that plan to tax the legal distributors? Brilliant. That just ensures that the legal distribution always has an extra cost that the illegal distributors will never face.

The only way for the government to compete with that will become to distribute everything, absolutely free. That won't do anything about legal stores getting robbed, burned down, or their owners getting whacked, but it's the only way possible to compete with cartels on capitalistic grounds.

So now, government dollars by the metric fuckton will go to obtaining and creating and distributing all the product addicts demand, at $0, forever.
How much of that imaginary savings will then go from guns and police to hospitals, mortuaries? And force cutbacks in legitimate government, because the tax revenue from drugs selling at $0 is also $0?

Oh, and the cartels? They're going to try and steal that, too. Breaking laws is what they do.

4) You're going to improve the purity? That's what creates the overdose deaths. Things like heroin have always been cut. It's precisely when someone gets a suddenly pure (or purer) batch than they're accustomed to that they overdose, like putting 100 octane gas in a car designed for 87, it's too rich, and a melt-down occurs. Plus, that illegal distributor can double his product and halve the cost if he cuts a ton of heroin with a ton of milk sugar. So he can cut the price below 100% purity, and double his sales, for a modest investment in milk sugar. And if he sweetens a batch now and again with carfentanil, he may wipe out his clientele, briefly, but that's society's overhead, not his, and his clientele will replicate in a few months, even if he has to give out free samples to get them hooked at first.
And if you try to undercut prices all the way to free, who do you suppose will take all you can deliver, and bring it to that cartel, who will then move it to somewhere where it's not free, especially since you're bringing it in by the ton, like government cheese?
All you'll accomplish is to make America the world's drug export leader, rather than import leader, and with 157 countries who haven't followed insanity by legalizing, you'll simply corner the market on doping the entire world, via the cartel distribution network.

Capitalism 101. Brilliant. You'll feed the monster so much, it'll grow to giant size overnight.
While uniting the world in despising this country. Who knew? (Besides everyone, I mean.)

O, if only there were...books, yes, Books! Books that communicated these concepts in terms even a child could understand...
Oh, wait:

5) The legal market will never be replaced by corporate sponsors, when the profits drop to zero, as they must. The only way to remove the illegal market is drive profits to zero, otherwise, as long as a buck can be made, crooks will be in it, or looking to siphon from it. Including by subverting those very corporations, with every tactic legal and illegal, and taking over. If you make the distribution pipeline ten miles wide and an inch deep, with a 1% profit margin, they'll be there, and in it to the neck. It's what they do. Only now you've given them legal and political cover.
Oh, and addicted so many people no one will be able to work to pay for their habit, or want to.

Shame about society when you trade a nation of farmers and shopkeepers for one of junkies, but that's the society you're aiming for.

And what happens if corporations - being composed of actual human beings - aren't as amoral as all that, and actually have scruples about selling dope to everyone hand over fist, and don't do that only because of government hindrance to the idea?
That concept never occurred to you, did it?

Porn is legal. So tell me, how much of it does, for example, Disney Corp. produce, year in and year out?
How much do they rake in from sales of legal tobacco every year at their theme parks?
And how many legal abortions were performed last year on Johnson & Johnson's corporate nickel?

Corporate America is afraid to offend a flea, and you think they'll grab this tar baby with both hands, ever???

6) You're going to do this without machineguns and private armies? Whose will be eliminated?
And what are the dwindling numbers of non-drug-using citizens going to be buying in droves, to protect themselves against the predations of literal armies of people high as a kite, everywhere, 24/7/365, and paying taxes on their dwindling earnings to fund this scheme?
You're actually going to kick off the war we're not fighting on drugs now, taxpaying sheep against government drug-distributing official cartels.

Oh, and the drug cartels? Guess which side they'll pitch in to help? Or did you imagine they'll snap their fingers, say "O, nuts, we're over!" and just walk away, sulking?
And what of their operations in all those other countries? Especially when your citizenry can now make the same pallets of cash money illegally smuggling your free American drugs into them?

7) "Some" resistance? You're kidding, right?
You think free drugs is going to produce less domestic abuse, DUI, public intoxication, and 57 other felony and misdemeanor crimes???
You're going to need to institute and construct the Escape from New York Federal Penitentiary on Manhattan, just to contain all the new criminals you'll create.
So much for legal drug utopia.

Tell me, in your experience, are there less crimes committed at bars than libraries, or more?
Show your work.

And then, un-drugged America will unite and smite the Scoobie Doo Drug Legalization Mystery Machine so hard, and so fast, you won't even leave a grease stain where you used to be. They'll burn you and this scheme out with fire, and if that isn't enough, they'll nuke you, twice, until the rubble glows. Then they'll go after your family, and make sure you watch them torn limb from limb in front of you before they end you.

And the next silly simpletons who pop up and say "drug legalization" will be burnt at the stake, at a public party, for the next 500 years.

You're going to fight them on that? Who're you going to recruit? The 7 people who think this could or should ever work? Plus an army of junkies? You're recasting yourselves in the role of Britain in China's Opium Wars, except your army will be all addicts.
Well-played.

And the country that follows will be so draconian on drugs ever after the five addicts left alive in the shadows will look back longingly at the silly, hamstrung, and utterly ineffective "War On Drugs" days with fond memories of a kinder, gentler time, before possession of one syringe would get your arms cut off.



Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

I understand that was an honest attempt to explain the concepts, and I applaud the courage, while regretting the necessity of stuffing that three-point attempt.
But as Google tells me the Chinese say,

 

哦 哇
所以 许多 失败