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Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

So here is an intersting conundrum, if you look at the distribution of money in the illegal drug business vs the legal drug business, the illegal side provides more jobs for people that the legal drug business won't hire. Ex-felons in general are a case which was recently called out in Richmond California.

Economics aside though, if you use the end of prohibition as an example of what might happen, you might over estimate the speed of commercialization. This is because prior to prohibition there was a thriving liquor business, and that business simply returned (within one generation so people who had run legal liquor stores before where around to run them again). This situation does not exist for drugs, medical pot clubs not withstanding.

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True. Luckily it's a much smaller market to begin with since most of the population drinks and only a relatively small fraction is interested in drugs besides marijuana.

I'm not really worried about the employment angle because cartel jobs aren't productive jobs. Essentially you're freeing up labor for the productive part of the economy which makes for a higher standard of living for everyone.

It might take a year or two to have nicely packaged heroin from well known companies available in pretty boxes in liquor stores, but I think you'd be rid of all the cartel violence within 6 months.

I think the point on the violence being reduced is a good one. I personally am in favor of legalizing drugs and allowing market forces to compensate the changes in societal risk; for example for people who are convicted of driving under the influence their insurance goes up and eventually their license gets revoked. Alcohol and cigarette taxes funding outreach and education efforts etc.

Given the various occupy activity, and the quantity of money that drugs influence, it seems like the 1% would figure out how to move all that money to them if they could do so without risking being arrested, extradited, murdered, Etc. Perhaps an unintended side effect, or perhaps not, but until recently I hadn't given a lot of thought to who would benefit most financially from such a change.

Real drug lords are part of the 1%. Most 1%'ers only work in one industry or a few related ones.

US policy is less about who would benefit from legalization (everyone) and more about who would suffer. If prohibition were ended there would be massive cuts in the budget and staff of the ATF, DEA, police, the entire boarder security industry, infantry defense contractors, prisons, courts and law firms.

Many politicians went to law school. No one wants to put their friends out of work.

Heroin was a trademark of Bayer. There are currently several companies manufacturing it for European countries. If it was more widely legal, why wouldn't production ramp up very quickly?

Like Oxycodone?

Ironically, a huge proportion of ex-felons were convicted for offences related to the possession and sale of those very drugs.

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