Hacker News Reader

This seems like an error in the law if there is no minimum quantity or any other kind of test for who is a "dealer". I sold some speakers once but that doesn't make me a Hi-fi dealer.

The error in the law would be if selling some speakers once is okay, but opening a hi-fi store is punishable with jail time.

If we agree that consuming drugs is fine, then why are we simultaneously trying to put dealers and distributors in jail? What’s the point?

Please read the article or read up on the Portuguese model, it makes points like this clear. Using drugs is not considered fine, it is still subject to psychological evaluations, warnings and escalating sanctions such as fines and passport confiscation aside from medical treatment. It’s treated as an administrative infraction, like a speeding ticket or a parking fine and not a criminal offence.

The other aspect not mentioned in the article is that in Portugal dealing in ‘paraphrenalia’ is not an offence. This is important because it allows charities and clinics to provide clean needles, dramatically reducing drug related infections. Aside from these policies greatly reducing drug use overall, it’s this change that is responsible for a magnified effect in reducing the infection and death rates.

At least around where I am, the police tend to threaten these people with extreme penalties when arrested in order to get them to give up their supplier in exchange for a much lighter sentence. So decriminalizing small time dealing will make it more difficult to prosecute the people who really are the gangster types.

I am very concerned about stronger penalties that are there to coerce someone to do something rather than be proportional as a deterrent or whatever else the legal system is supposed to do in a given country. It puts you too much at the mercy of the police. This reminds me of the strategy prosecutors are using in the US where they are piling insane amounts of charges on to force the supposed criminal to take a plea bargain instead of going to court.

To me that's a quick path to where legal systems go to die.

Remember Aaron Swartz. Prosecutor Carmen Ortiz threw so much preposterous book at him that he cracked and killed himself. An indelible shame and loss for all

If drugs are legalized—truly legalized—the need for “gangster types” diminishes and all that is left is supply and demand.

This is true, and I think there are a lot of ways in which that would improve things. Has anyone really taken it this far though?

The US has: there were lots of criminal types in the alcohol business in the 1930s. Now there are virtually gone.

Seriously, without prohibition in the first place, so much of the police/industrial complex never would have come into existence.

You’re conflating. It’s “military/industrial complex” as Eisenhower called it. You’re probably referring to the “prison industrial complex”, the influential lobby of private prisons.

While this is true, it's not good enough to just assume that drugs are the same as alcohol because alcohol is a drug.

That's true. Eg alcohol inebriation tends to make a sizeable part of the population violent; pot eg just makes people hungry and lethargic. And from what I heard cocaine is basically sociopathy as a powder. Etc.

The problem of organised crime has more to do with legal prohibition of a good that enjoys widespread demand, than with that good being a drug. See gambling or prostitution or corruption in construction. I remember some article about 'sand mining mafias' in India. Sand!

To add a different perspective: the only reason gangster types are in this business is exactly because it is criminalized.

Gangsters aren't particularly good at doing business, and will be out-competed by professional outfits when the law allows.

> If you use drugs, and you don't have a job, selling a bit of the stuff is the most obvious way to make some money.

That's interesting - it points to something special about drugs. Most people I know without jobs eat, but they're not inclined to become grocers to make a little on the side. It seems there's some scarcity introduced because dealing is illegal. The unintended consequence of legalization might be the elimination of the casual dealer.

I don't know about this. Weed is semi-legal in The Netherlands but people who deal "on the side" are still very common.

Are the "on the side" dealers selling the same stuff as the semi-legal dealers? Why does anyone not use the semi-legal dealers?

Probably something to do with the transaction costs and margins that can be achieved.

I don't think I've ever met a drug dealer who wasn't getting high off their own supply (whatever supply that might be). Most dealers are basically dealing to pay for their own habits.