Because I can't, no matter how hard I try, see hard-drug use as a "victimless" crime, this proposal is pretty much just as scary and counterproductive-seeming to me now as it was twenty years ago, when I was a (squeaky-clean) college kid surrounded by other college kids agitating for the legalization of drugs. Same premise then: drug use will happen, so get in control of (or at least tax) production and distribution so that at least you eliminate the crime-for-purchase connection.

I just... don't... know. I guess the problem I see is that a heroin user has incentive to get drug money by whatever means he or she has: if he (let's go with "he" for less tortured grammar) is able to hold down a job, any job, he'll spend his wages on H; if he can't hold down a job, he'll steal or become a prostitute or whatever to get the money. Legalizing the drug doesn't change that action or its motivation. It might help with drug-provider violence - you know, "gang wars," I suppose.

Providing the drug, free of charge or government-subsidized, I could see as having an effect on drug-user-committed crime and drug-provider-committed crime. But I'm fervently against more government control of the commanding heights, even when the particular heights under discussion are currently illegal drugs. Both philosophically and practically, I'm agin it: philosophically, I want government fingers out of private life. Practically, government monopolies seldom do what they're intended to do. (Maybe the Post Office. Maybe.) I fear unintended consequences.

So (sigh) that's where I still am: caught between unintended consequences and the precautionary principle. Hence, I find Moskos's final suggestion, that legalization be tried in three notorious "greenhouse" first, at least more palatable than across-the-board legalization. I do wonder, still, if a "successful" result in Seattle (not sure how to quantify success: lower crime? Less drug use? Less harmful drug use? Some combination?) would translate to L.A.

Oops, "greenhouses." No coffee yet.

Jamie,

Legalizing the drug doesn't change that action or its motivation.

OK. Now assuming you are economically literate let us try a thought experiment.

How much thieving or prostitution will you have to do if your drugs cost $300 a day. How much if they cost $5 a day?

How many people can find minimum wage jobs that can support a $300 a day habit? How many can find minimum wage jobs that can support a $5 a day habit.

===

I swear to God. Conservatives become economically illiterate when it comes to drugs and for Liberals it is the only place they are economically literate.

It wonders me.

===

I think your problem is that in some respects you are looking for a perfect solution. There is no perfect solution. But there is better and there is much worse.

If you look it up you will find Amsterdam has about the highest rate of break and enter in the western world.

I, like many people, did not have a problem with marajuana use but thought harder drugs should remain illegal.

However that all changed when I saw a close relative destroy her life on drugs. She is now homeless much of the time, and has been in and out of prison. And there's nothing I can do for her, pay for an apartment for her to trash and vandalize and get kicked out of? Let her live at my place so she can steal from me? I just don't know.

But, why do I now think those drugs should be legal instead of illegal? Because I see what the law has done to her. Telling someone "jail or rehab" is not a choice, they are not choosing rehab, so of course the rehab does not work. They have to make a choice to get better, not be forced into it. She is no longer eligible for rehab since she's left so many times when forced into it. So even if she wants to get better, the State refuses to help her! It's on us her family members.

Which is fine that we should help, but what kind of morality or law says we'll spend billions punishing you for your weakness but won't help you. If we're going to spend the money anyway.

And due to the illegality of the drugs, she has to deal with the scum of the earth trying to get them. Violent organized crime is a part of her life, when she would never need to deal with people like that if drugs were legal.

If they were legal, the price would likely come down, and she might be able to hold down a job. Maybe not, but she'd be safer.

The drugs can ruin your life, but the illegality ruins it far faster. As soon as you get arrested, it's like the old scarlet letter of the old days, it follows you around.

If we took that money we spend on enforcement, and instead spent a small portion on rehab, there would be a lot less addicts, organized crime would go down. It would be like it was last century when those drugs were legal: only a few people still did them, but their lives weren't always ruined immediately, and they didn't have to deal with dangerous criminals.

plutosdad,

I agree rehab is better than prison. But rehab is a scam.

Because of my writing I have had heroin users and rehab councilors write to me. Every single one of them tells me that in there experience there is not one - I repeat - not one female heroin user in their experience who has not been sexually abused.

Which corresponds to what Dr. Lonnie Shavelson found:

Heroin

There are two things required for drug addiction:

1. Genetic susceptibility
2. Trauma

If you read the above check out the link on the sidebar to my drug addiction articles.

OK why is rehab a scam? Because the trauma gets imprinted in the brain and it is only when the imprint decays that the desire for drugs is reduced. So far the only thing that fixes it is time.

Here are some other articles you might find of interest:

Addiction Is A Genetic Disease

PTSD and the Endocannabinoid System

Hugh,

It would be interesting to find out why. Perhaps heroin users find Amsterdam congenial (relatively) to them and congregate there. The answer then is to legalize supply.

Switzerland has done that by referendum (twice - the last time with 60% approval) and doesn't seem to have as much of a problem as Amsterdam.

As long as being under the influence of intoxicants is treated as an "aggravating circumstance", I'm fine with legalizing drugs. Kill someone while stoned: Murder 1, chair within 6 months.