07 Jan Collateral damage in the war on drugs

Yesterday I published Adam Marton’s moving account of his brief, long-ago encounter with a young Baltimore man who would become one of that city’s 344 homicide victims in 2015.  I said the war on drugs has caused far more harm than the drugs it targets.

A Contrarian reader in the US responds:

My grandson died of a heroin overdose at age twenty-four in Fort Lauderdale, FL. Yes, he was an addict. But the proximate cause of his death was the quality of the heroin. It was extremely pure. In my view, this is like drinking bath-tub gin during the depression. What a waste!

We have long accepted that Prohibition failed because banning liquor sales drove prices through the roof, thereby empowering criminal gangs. It’s standard economic theory.

So why have we been so slow to reach the same conclusion about banning sales of marijuana and harder drugs?

Probably because the war on drugs employs so many people at good pay with excellent benefits. Police, law firms, prosecutors, judges, prison guards, prison executives, bail bondsmen, court workers, parole officers, equipment suppliers, politicians, and untold others have a profitable stake in the misery the war inflicts on their fellow citizens.