A Free Market for Illicit Drugs

On November 3, 2014, 55% of Oregon voters approved the Oregon Legalized Marijuana Initiative, Measure 91 that would legalize recreational marijuana for adults ages 21 and older and allow these people to possess up to eight ounces of "dried" marijuana and up to four plants. In addition to this passage, Alaska and Washington D.C. have also passed similar measures nearly a year after Colorado and Washington's legalization of marijuana. Nevertheless, these recently passed legalization policies have designed a framework of burdensome taxation and regulation of marijuana that will not effectively eliminate or reduce the black market for marijuana and even other drugs. Perhaps, a more radical solution must be sought that can ultimately eliminate the illicit drug trade and allow the legal harvest and consumption of all illicit drugs; a free market for drugs.

 

First, let's face the cold hard facts:

"In 2005, the United Nations estimated the global illegal drug trade is worth more than $320 billion. It also estimates there are 230 million illegal drug users in the world."

"The U.S. is the No. 1 nation in the world in illegal drug use."

"500,000 people are in prison today for committing drug crimes."

These are just some of the few statistics illustrating the failure of the War on Drugs to decrease illicit drug consumption and violence rates. Evidently, it has dramatically resulted in the militarization of the police, and a cycle of poverty and violence in poor communities that lack important figures who are in jail because of drug offenses.

Instead, a free market for illegal drugs would, according to a Cato study, "save the U.S. about $41 billion a year in enforcing the drug laws" after having already spent $1 trillion, make it viable to release prisoners who have committed non-violent drug offenses, increase economic wealth, and reverse the trend of continuous government encroachment of civil liberties in the past several decades.

However, it must not be assumed that the government should have an interest in protecting what individuals consume.

As free individuals, we must decide what is best for our bodies; harmful or not harmful. If the government decides this decision for us, what prevents their regulation of anything that can truly cause us harm? In the words of Ludwig Von Mises, "why not prevent him from reading bad books and seeing bad plays, from looking at bad paintings and statues and from hearing bad music?"