"There Will Always Be Criminals"?
Windypundit points to a piece by David Freddoso defending the War on Drugs:
The cause of criminal violence is not drugs or alcohol but rather criminals. To believe otherwise is to expect every drug dealer in America to give up and apply for a job at McDonald’s or WalMart the day legalization occurs. Every society contains a sizable element whose members refuse to make an honest living under any circumstances. The legalization of drugs will not change this large-scale reality of human behavior.
This is, of course, utter nonsense.
What Freddoso doesn’t get is that the drug war makes it easier, not harder, to be a criminal. Dealing illegal drugs is trivial — which is one reason why kingpins enlist children to do it. “Take this over there and bring back the bag he gives you.” Etc. How easy or hard is it, by contrast, to deal in bootlegged alcohol or untaxed cigarettes?
Robbing a liquor store, or shoplifting from Target, or mugging a guy on the street, or setting up a multi-billion Ponzi scheme, is hard. Far harder than dealing drugs. So if one subscribes, as Freddoso does, to the (archaic) view of crime as somehow “structural” and endemic to any society, then the logical course of action is to remove the easy ways to be a criminal — like dealing drugs.
So, like I said, utter nonsense.
Similarly, the drug war is responsible for the invention of the most dangerous drugs in the first place. There’s actually very little money to be made in marijuana — or, for that matter, cocaine. But if you’re going to break the law — either as seller or buyer — then you might as well break it in the most efficient (i.e., value-added) way possible: crack, crystal meth, ecstasy, etc. They were all spawned directly and proximately by the war on drugs.
Did I mention “utter nonsense”?
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Just to be clear, this sociological debate over the propriety of drug criminalization is of course not my preferred framing of the issue. Competent consenting adults have a right to wreck their lives via drugs, alcohol, gambling or risky sex as they see fit. And the rest of us have a right not to be subjected to the near limitless incursions upon our civil liberties regularly perpetrated in the name of “saving us from ourselves.” It was just that Freddoso’s argument, even by “sociology” standards, was so mind-bogglingly asinine as to demand a response, even if a sociological one.
Previously:
–War on Drugs Now Trumps First Amendment
–No Drug Test Left Behind
Filed under: Fourth Amendment, Law Enforcement Abuses, Privacy Issues
Also, severe penalties for drug trafficking effectively lessen the penalties for other violent crimes crimes. If a dealer is facing decades in prison for selling drugs, what additional penalties can he face if he adds thuggery to his behavior? So extortion, turf wars and general intimidation become part of the drug trade because of our legal system.
The Bloggingheads debate between Freddoso and Balko is interesting because Freddoso is so clearly engaging in a stick-his-fingers-in-his-ears approach to considering reason. There isn't enough detail in the debate since it's only 30 minutes, but it's fascinating to listen to Freddoso emphasize the "but" in "I support civil liberties but…".
Both of them whiff badly in pushing against a 9th Amendment analysis to ending the drug war. Balko offers the classic libertarian mistake* of pushing for federalism as a response rather than an emphasis on rights. I would say that a 9th Amendment analysis is obvious, but I accept that we need to move to decriminilization in a logical manner to undo the harm done. It's the same approach to dismantling the illegitimate facets of the government. We need to unwind the incentives.
* I've made this mistake.
Utter Nonsense…
Kip found some………