The absurdity of legalising drugs:
“The war on drugs”: what a bombastic, vainglorious phrase that is…But the war on drugs isn’t a war at all. It is an ongoing and complex process of law enforcement. It has different components which are handled in different ways by different jurisdictions and with differing degrees of effort, intelligence and success.
Generalisations are impossible — except one: unlike war, law enforcement is never ‘won’.
Here’s another two things that can go together: the availability of a legal, regulated and abundant supply of drugs and a thriving criminal trade in the same or similar substances. In theory, legalisation should mean no more illegal supply — after all, why go to some guy down an alleyway when you could go to a licensed outlet with unadulterated products sold in standard units?
In practice, it’s more complicated than that — as America’s opioid epidemic proves beyond doubt. Far from pushing out the pushers, the over-prescription of entirely legal opioid-based medications has created new opportunities for them. By expanding the size and the demographic diversity of the opioid dependent population, the legal trade has expanded the market for illegal opioids including heroin. If your prescription has run out, or you need something cheaper (or stronger or perhaps merely different) then the dealers will sort you out. Of course, the product may or may not be cut with super-strength synthetic opioids like fentanyl — which is key factor in the epidemic’s horrific and worsening death toll.
Remember, all of this has happened in the context of a regulated and abundant supply of unadulterated opioids, and yet everything that isn’t supposed to happen has happened. The criminal trade hasn’t just survived, it has extended its reach — and innovated in all sort of dangerous new ways.
For completes article https://unherd.com/2018/09/absurdity-legalising-drugs/