A quick note here based on a conversation I had with a friend. If you ever find yourself around anyone smoking marijuana (or any other illegal drug) who happens to be a lefty statist, present the following observation:
By smoking marijuana, you are nearly explicitly endorsing the market’s ability to provide for the safety of drugs. Marijuana, since it is illegal (most states) is produced, traded, and consumed entirely outside of state regulations which monitor its contents, production, and distribution for health threats. If you truly believe in the necessity of the beloved FDA to protect us from harmful stuff, then you should put down the pipe immediately and never smoke again. If you continue to do so, however, then you are ackowledging the value of the individual’s judgment as well as the regulatory mechanism of the market over that of state politicans and bureaucracy.
I made this point to a lad smoking pot in front of me and he was left speechless, though I’m certain his mind will remain unchanged.
Yeah, defiance of any state law is an expression of individual volition disallowed by an adherence to democracy or the state in general. It’s even a more powerful argument than the one here, but we were talking about food regulations and it hadn’t occurred to me.
Further, you can add that this is all taking place DESPITE any of the actors ability to take their case in front of a court AND the addition threat of being caught by an (extra) ultra-heavily funded gang that attempts to interrupt the process at every level.
The other thing that I always think about is that the fact that it isn’t legal means that the people one has to buy from are often the most unsavory sorts of people and there’s never any way of seeking recourse other than hurting people if a dealer or buyer gets screwed over.
You can also argue that the cost is artificially high because of the risk of government violence being factored in. I once calculated the markup from the cost of making a kilo of coke (with gasoline in some jungle) to when it hits the streets. I forget the number, but it was something like 4000%.
The government also makes it very hard to do studies on “designer drugs”. I’ve read about two phenethylamine analogs (the family of drugs with “ecstasy”, LSD, etc.) that when combined mimic very closely the effects of ecstasy, but are not neurotoxic at entheogenic levels. The research is limited, but that means that it is thought to be basically as harmless as taking an aspirin.
I think that point is missed a lot. There would be a huge incentive for really smart chemistry folks to create new very safe drugs designed specifically for recreational purposes. I guess its impossible to tell since its all unseen, so it doesn’t get mentioned much.
How anybody could ever say that the drugs market is an example of a free market is beyond me. Listen up kids, just because you don’t see the violence involved in the drugs trade when you get the stuff of your dealer, it doesn’t mean that the drugs industry epitomises voluntary exchange. Even in the cases where no coercion is involved, there are still huge barriers to entry as a result of weed or whatever else being illegal. The result is that most drugs that circulate are bad quality and overpriced.
Those are just the supply side problems. On the demand side you have uninformed buyers who get ripped off without knowing it.
actually says that reason for potency increasing is a result of harder crack downs from the gov’t. Given a certain risk level set by the gov’t, it only makes it possible for something to be worth the risk if it is high potency
