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Comment by handelaar | Hacker News Reader

For values of 'worked for alcohol' that include 'moved world's largest criminal organisation into non-alcohol-related activity without impacting its organisational capacity one jot'.

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People drink and take drugs because they enjoy it.

What illegal activity are you proposing people will seek if drugs are medicinalized/legalized? Saying "oh they'll just move on" is a bit hand-wavey.

Gun running, human trafficking, political corruption, extortion, kidnapping, straight up stealing shit, fencing, counterfeiting.

You know all those crimes that aren't substance based.

And depending on the terms of legalization, I'm sure drugs would always be a small part, whether that be black market to avoid taxes or prescription drugs.

None of these things is as profitable as drugs. Tens of dollars per gram, of stuff that grows in the forest and requires but a little processing. There's nothing so profitable to move on to.

Are you suggesting that the lower profits mean a crime ring can't be organized around them? Because history would disagree with you.

No, what he (and I, I suppose) is suggesting is that without drugs criminal organizations lose their primary source of funding. They can move onto other, smaller pies, but ultimately it means a dramatic downsizing of organized crime and a consequent loss of influence.

Which isn't to say that they won't run guns and traffick humans, but right now the problem in Latin America is that these criminal organizations practically run the government they are so large. Depriving them of the drug pie, the tobacco pie, the alcohol pie... they will have nothing they can turn to that will allow them to maintain their present level of governmental corruption.

Of course not. Just that a less profitable but still high-risk business is less attractive and likely to be pursued less vigorously and by fewer people. Which is the outcome we want. Zero tolerance is not eliminating crime, and it is extremely expensive.

Plus, most of the criminal activities organized crime goes into which aren't drugs have non-consenting victims -- like extortion, theft of vehicle cargoes, human smuggling (vs. domestic labor), etc. So it's easier for the law enforcement groups to ally with those victims against the organized crime groups.

Market size.

Drugs are relatively easy to produce and smuggle and have a massive community demand. Nothing else comes close.

Added benefit: fewer drug-related prisoners being trained up as career criminals.

EDIT: also, "people" refers to "people in the community taking drugs", not the gangs.

We should probably legalize all those too. They'll go away.

This is hyperbolic, unreasonable and valueless.

Or it could just be tongue-in-cheek

I like the way you think! I had the same idea. What makes something a crime is that it is illegal. If we make everything legal then there isn't any crime! I know, I know, I'm a genius.

The UK situation with cigarettes might be useful to look at.

Cigarettes are legal to buy for anyone over the age of 18 (was 16 until feb 2011). Average price per pack of 20 is between £5.50 and £7; most of that is (Over 80%) tax.

High local prices, easy access to cheap foreign cigs (France is a couple of hours away and hypermarkets exist to sell alcohol and cigs to English day-trippers) mean that very many (1 in 5) cigarettes (and half of all hand rolling tobacco) smoked in the UK are smuggled or counterfeit.

Worse, there's money to be made for criminal gangs smuggling counterfeit cigs.

Cannabis is easy to grow. I support legalisation. But I am worried by the fact that criminal gangs already grow and distribute cannabis in the UK (sometimes using forced trafficked labour); by the possible harm to mental health; and by the weird culture of binge drinking and underage drinking in UK and how that would transfer to drug use.

UK annual tax income: (http://www.the-tma.org.uk/tma-publications-research/facts-fi...)

Over 80% VAT and duties: (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/budget/8401996/Budget-201...)

Video report about blatant selling of smuggled cigs: (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-13101212)

Organised crime in Scotland and their involvement in smuggled tobacco (with 1 in 5 and half of all hand rolling tobacco claim: (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-12219726)

More like what illegal activity will criminals try if drugs are made legal.

There are bars everywhere, cigarettes are everywhere so other than a little bootlegging of alcohol and cigs there isn't much profit in those things.

Whatever people want and whatever makes criminals money is what they will try.

Exactly. Crime would adjust itself, or find a new market. Compromising by legalizing something which has a purpose in being illegal is detrimental to solving the problem.

Bullshit. As if criminals simply avoid other vice because it's less profitable, totally false. Dangerously false.

There are not open markets just floating around waiting for criminals to suddenly discover them.

I disagree. I believe there are plenty of avenues of criminal activity. Trouble is, most criminals aren't visionaries, and why would they have an incentive to fond other profitable crimes of they can practically earn money doing what they do now?

By that logic they will all suddenly take up investment banking.

Thing is, there is no real purpose for many/most controlled substances to be illegal, unless you choose from the following list:

* Excuse for government overstep of constitutional provisions * Money to the prison-industrial complex (i know, trite, but it's true) * One more step in the notion that you don't own your own body

And those aren't legitimate reasons, IMAO.

I agree with you on libertarian grounds that, in principle, a person should be free to ingest whatever he likes. However, looking at civilized society as a whole, I don't see making most controlled substances legal useful. With the exception of marijuana and a few anxiolytics (which I'd encourage to be legalized), I think they'd be counterproductive to the working order of a society. Society needs someone to clean the toilets, and do other labor intensive jobs. But if you have a legally accessible ticket to happiness through drugs, why go to work?

Because they need to earn money to buy the drugs. By your logic anyone with a hobby wouldn't bother going to work because they also have a legally acceptable ticket to happiness.

Aren't you just making the argument that legalizing drugs would increase wages?

Everything reaches an equilibrium. Taking away a high-profit/low-cost activity like drug trafficking will shift activity to something else, no doubt, but this alternate activity will likely be less profitable and support a smaller organization.

We're seeing this with Wall Street. Dodd-Frank is raising the costs of doing business, causing the industry to down size.

If the law causes more harm than the drug in the first place, the law needs to go.

Criminals are just people. They do what is most profitable for them given their circumstances. If you legalize drugs, most of the current drug criminals will get normal jobs at McDonalds or Wall Street or whatever.

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