The War on Drugs

Here is a question. If Anheuser-Busch was to decide to crush the Miller Brewing Company in order increase its market share and use sabotage of Miller assets and intimidation of bars, convenience stores and other retailers who sell beer, what would happen? The legal consequences would be rapid and harsh. Anheuser-Busch would be sued in civil court and its officers would be charged criminally for a variety of crimes including extortion, destruction of property and assault.

Here is another question. It is well known that many adolescents, especially boys, are very fond of beer. They will break the law and risk parental wrath to get it. Given the amount of money teenagers spend on music and clothes they clearly have spending money. What if Anheuser-Busch were to attempt to increase its profits by selling beer to teenagers? The answer is that the brewery would be put out of business. Law suits from parents and criminal charges for supplying alcohol to minors would bankrupt the business and see the corporate officers in jail.

Anheuser-Busch and other brewing companies forgo the profits that they could make from selling to underage persons because they stand to lose far more than they would make. When they want to take market share away from a competitor they hire advertising agencies to develop new ad campaigns and marketing specialists to develop new more attractive packaging. They hire popular actors, singers, athletes or models to be their spokesmen. They do not blow up their competitors warehouses or burn down taverns that sell their competitors product.

They take the proverbial high road in these things because the production, distribution and sale, to adults, of beer are legal. The same thing can be said of wine and liquor. It is also true that brewers, vintners and distillers pay their taxes and supply their employees with benefits such as retirement pensions and medical coverage for themselves and their families. They also withhold state and federal taxes from their employees pay.

They do these things, again, because they are engaged in a lawful business.

Now imagine what would happen if the production and sale of alcohol were to be outlawed. Well, we don’t have to because the United States actually did outlaw the production and sale of alcoholic beverages. What happened is the transformation of the Mafia from neighborhood criminal gangs in cities with large enough Italian communities into a multinational criminal syndicate that was, for a time, “bigger than US Steel”.

The government’s “war on alcohol” turned the competition between brewers and distillers into a shooting war. Where before there had been advertising campaigns there were now drive by shootings, arson fires and car bombs.

Law enforcement officers, district attorneys, judges and politicians were corrupted by the illicit profits from the alcohol trade. Murderers like Charles Luciano, Joseph Bonanno and Alphonse Capone lived like kings. Some of them wound up in jail and some died by violence, but those were risks that they were willing to take because of the rewards of wealth and power that came to the winners in the illegal booze trade.

The same situation pertains in regard to the drug war. By outlawing marijuana and narcotics we do not abolish the trade in them we only drive it underground. The saloon keeper will ask a young looking patron for ID because he has much to lose if he is caught serving a minor. The drug dealer is already a criminal and has no incentive to limit his sales to adults.

A dealer who is robbed by another dealer has no recourse to the law. He must fight to survive. Market share cannot be increased by marketing. It must be taken by force. Innocents are often caught in the crossfire.

Quality control is spotty at best. A brewer or distiller who finds that a batch of beer ro liquor is contaminated will not sell it for fear of law suits and bad press. A drug dealer who finds out that he has a bad batch will sell it as quickly as possible. Sometimes the results are lethal.

To be sure the number of people using drugs recreationally is smaller with prohibition than would be the case with legalization. However we must ask ourselves if saving a relatively small number of people from drug addiction is worth the price we are paying for it.

Prohibition creates a situation where minors have easy access to drugs. When I was in junior high school I could lay my hands on marijuana much easier than beer. Prohibition moves billions of dollars of economic activity underground where it cannot be taxed and where it enriches criminals, many of them violent.

Prohibition leads to the creation of ever more powerful recreational drugs. This is because manufacturers, smugglers and dealers are always looking for ways to transport more drugs in less space. The switch from powder cocaine to crack cocaine and from the kinds of amphetamines a doctor might prescribe to crystal meth are examples of this.

Drug abuse is not a good thing any more than drunkenness is, but the question is where is the greater harm? Is it the business of government to save us from ourselves? Which is the lesser evil letting those who would destroy themselves do so in peace or all of the social pathologies that spin off from the drug war?