There is a better option: a regulated market, much as we have for alcohol and tobacco, with controls on who can buy what, when, where and how. It provides the flexibility to treat different drugs differently, thereby minimising the harms of drug consumption and ending those associated with the illicit drug trade.
Unfortunately, overregulation would still lead to illegal drug trade and the associated public health and criminal justice problems. In California, there’s a parallel market for unlicensed sales of marijuana because of high taxes, high compliance costs, and the limited supply of licenses. Since Black and Hispanic dealers have been having trouble entering the legal market due to the high costs involved, they are still disproportionately subject to marijuana-related arrests, and legal marijuana shops have been aggressively lobbying to get unlicensed sales shut down. And even in states where marijuana has been legalized, Black and Latino people are still disproportionately arrested for marijuana-related offenses compared to White people (for example, as of 2018, public consumption of weed was still illegal in DC). These harms need to be weighed alongside the benefits and costs of different regulatory models for each drug being considered.
I don’t think that legalization will solve racial bias in policing—I think the relevant question is whether Black and Latino people are arrested at higher or lower rates now for drug-related offenses than they were before legalization.
Right, so I do agree that if you’re going to move away from prohibition, you do need to consider how non-prohibition would be implemented in reality, rather than some fictitious ideal world, and then whether it really would be better in reality. The thing people tend to forget is that you can evolve regulation, so I’m optimistic problems like those mentioned here can eventually be overcome.
Also, to state the obvious, that something has some problems is not an all-things-considered reason against doing it.
From the piece:
Unfortunately, overregulation would still lead to illegal drug trade and the associated public health and criminal justice problems. In California, there’s a parallel market for unlicensed sales of marijuana because of high taxes, high compliance costs, and the limited supply of licenses. Since Black and Hispanic dealers have been having trouble entering the legal market due to the high costs involved, they are still disproportionately subject to marijuana-related arrests, and legal marijuana shops have been aggressively lobbying to get unlicensed sales shut down. And even in states where marijuana has been legalized, Black and Latino people are still disproportionately arrested for marijuana-related offenses compared to White people (for example, as of 2018, public consumption of weed was still illegal in DC). These harms need to be weighed alongside the benefits and costs of different regulatory models for each drug being considered.
I don’t think that legalization will solve racial bias in policing—I think the relevant question is whether Black and Latino people are arrested at higher or lower rates now for drug-related offenses than they were before legalization.
Right, so I do agree that if you’re going to move away from prohibition, you do need to consider how non-prohibition would be implemented in reality, rather than some fictitious ideal world, and then whether it really would be better in reality. The thing people tend to forget is that you can evolve regulation, so I’m optimistic problems like those mentioned here can eventually be overcome.
Also, to state the obvious, that something has some problems is not an all-things-considered reason against doing it.