Hi! This is the Market Economics Fairy! I help supply and demand equilibrate everywhere! If there is unmet demand for a fairly easy-to-grow cash crop, then it means that the prices are too low! Raise them, and farmland will switch from other commodities as it becomes marginally profitable to do so!
Sincerely, the Market Economics Fairy!
(Full disclosure: I'm just borrowing this character because it's suddenly relevant.)
So, if you will be legal drug seller and you will be tight on money, what you will do? Just invest into few small doses and you will have clients for life...
Why you are worrying about revenues of cartels?
If you think that selling drugs is legal, then their business is equally legal to business of Apple or Microsoft.
Why you are not worrying about revenues of Microsoft or Apple?
Because Apple and Microsoft aren't using their revenues to kill thousands of people. If cutting off their revenues diminishes their ability to do that, it'd be irresponsible of us not to worry about it, or at least consider it
Because Microsoft and Apple's retail employees don't do drive-by shootings of each other's storefronts.
No one here is claiming that selling drugs is legal. Some of us think that selling drugs should become legal, in the hopes that businesses that are like Microsoft and Apple, i.e., don't assassinate judges, etc, will outcompete the cartels and decrease the cartel's revenues, hence decreasing their ability and participation in such undesirable activities.
Of note, since I was curious as to the answer myself and just found out, there are still 'gangs' (though less the urban variety we're used to seeing) based around moonshining.
That prompted me to ask "why is moonshining illegal", and the best (wrong) answer I could come up with was for production and delivery to dry counties.
Turns out, it's just a matter of taxation. Moonshiners are welcome to go legit, but they then have to pay $2.14 for each 750ml bottle they make, which cuts into profitability.
As they likely don't have reputations and/or massive marketing budgets, they still and distribute illegally, which turns it into a pure profit + overhead scenario.
There's still a small safety element. Sometime moonshiners produce toxic alcohol, or they contaminate their product with things that are toxic.
I agree that the main element is taxation.
Very many cigarettes sold in England are smuggled in from EU because of tax. But now people are counterfeiting so some cigs are both smuggled and fake - the quality of some of the smuggled product is alarmingly poor. (But it's tricky to get any sensible information about this because the only people releasing information are the customs / police who want to make it seem as scary as they can.)
That's an interesting point that I've never considered (or heard mentioned in the legalize argument). I'm for legalization + taxation of all drugs but will we still see significant folks producing and selling illegally as a tax dodge? May legalization merely get drugs into more hands but still maintain significant illegal production? If so, a lot of the supposed benefits of legalization dry up.
"The number of jurisdictions which ban the sale of alcoholic beverages is steadily decreasing which means that many of the former consumers of moonshine are much nearer to a legal alcohol sales outlet than was formerly the case. Moonshine-like distilled beverages with names like Collier and McKeel White Dog,[27] Everclear, Virginia Lightning, Georgia Moon Corn Whiskey, Ole Smoky Tennessee Moonshine,[28] Platte Valley Corn Whiskey Cat Daddy and Junior Johnson's Midnight Moon are produced commercially and sold in liquor stores, typically packaged in a clay jug or glass Mason jar. As a result of these changes and aggressive law enforcement, moonshine production is far less widespread than it was formerly." [1]
Yes, here in the UK cigarettes are legal but smuggled cigarettes are a massive (£multi-billion) business because taxes are so high.
Obviously there is a point at which taxation is virtually equivalent to prohibition (1,000,000%?) so the aim of a good tax in this arena is to (1) discourage consumption (2) provide some revenue to offset against social costs of the activity (healthcare costs of smokers, for example) while (3) not being so outrageous as to push the activity underground altogether.
From what I understand meth is produced really poorly by regional producers.
I think it would end up more expensive at your local pharmacy if legalized. The benefit would be you know you won't lose your teeth from the odd chemicals the producer is using.
Methamphetamine is currently available at your local pharmacy. It's a generic drugs and costs less than a $1 per dose.
You don't lose your teeth from meth because of chemicals used in it's production, you lose them due to a combination of poor oral hygiene and reduced saliva production. The same thing happens if you abuse the stuff you can get at the pharmacy.
No because Meth can't create huge profits for drug cartels. Street price is too low when compared to heavy drugs. And it's the money that makes cartels invincible.
You're referring to a line I never drew. Programs can be larger or smaller in many dimensions - LoC, complexity, features... Other things being equal, the smaller program is easier to deal with. We don't need to say "these programs are large and these are small" to make valid inferences in this area.
Drugs are changing your brain by altering it rewarding system.