A New Kind Of Drug War

3 Pages 648 Words

A New Kind of Drug War

Throughout this article, it basically explains one principal postulate in details and astonishing statistics. The idea is that the traditional drug war that has been used previously and that is currently being used is very costly with trivial returns. The thought is that to make narcotics legal and very expensive will reduce addiction and crime.
To back this idea up, it continues with the fact that Nixon and every other president afterward declared war on drugs. “33 billion dollars has been spent in resources toward prosecuting the war on drugs in recent years,” says Jeffery A. Miron, Boston University economist. The problems still occur though, from U.S. prison overpopulation to crime and corruption from the illegal drug trade. To top it off, the return on this huge investment is miniscule. Instead of “war on drugs policies,” Robert J. Barro, a Harvard University economist and BusinessWeek commentator suggests a “legalization, regulation and taxation” policy. This regulation would also be complemented with the imposing of steep excise taxes. The reason this efficient policy has not been implemented in the past is from fear that the drop in drug prices after legalization would cause the number of addicted citizens to increase.
Another concept introduced is that price matters, even when considering addictive substances. The statistics clearly prove this is true, for as prices of illegal substances increase the usage of them dramatically decreases and vice versa. For example, “the price of marijuana increased from 1975 to 1992 an accounted for 70% of the usage reduction during that time” (Farrell). The only problem with enforcing high prices though, are the producers who would start to go underground. Even so, law enforcement would focus on a much smaller illegal economy than in the past and the revenue from the taxes would go toward treatment programs.
I agree with this article the more I rea...