Speaking of low wages for unskilled workers (were we? I hear you cry. Well, I was.) I must now confess that I have only lately come to The Wire. Yes, I am one of those unlucky souls who is late to every trend--you have only to look through my wardrobe or my collection of home electronics to get a good sense of what is just about to go out of style. I haven't seen a movie in six months.
Stop looking at me like that, okay? I'm a very busy person.
Mmm, where was I? Ah, yes, The Wire. Like everyone else, having just finished watching the first season, I am utterly besotted. Unlike everyone else, it inspired the following question, upon which I mused for a good part of yesterday. What would happen to the economy of the Baltimore housing projects if drugs were legalized? Would it ultimately be better or worse for the people there?
There are, of course, a lot of negative effects of the drug trade in the inner city. For one thing, because contracts can't be enforced by law, they get enforced by interpersonal violence. For another, dealers sell a lot of their product to locals, which certainly doesn't improve their life prospects. Then there are all the kids who end up with wasted lives, dead or in jail, because of the war on drugs. Sudhir Venkatesh's work, which Levitt and Dubner covered in Freakonomics, implies that drugs pull kids in the inner-city out of low wage work into even lower wage work--the average drug dealer makes less than minimum wage. (My cousin, who is finishing her PhD in criminology, tells me that this is true of all non-white-collar crime.) But a few drug dealers make a lot of money, which encourages them to play the lottery rather than slugging it out as a fast food worker or baggage handler and hoping to move up.
It is very hard for me to imagine that, on net, legalizing drugs wouldn't do good things for the inner cities.
However, I presume that the trade does bring in a fair amount of money from outside, sustaining the local economy. The immediate impact of legalization would be to throw a huge number of otherwise unskilled people out of work. Many of them have criminal records and no education to speak of, making them barely employable, if at all. On the presumption that drug sales would be licensed and regulated, I'm pretty sure that current drug kingpins wouldn't be allowed to own . . . er . . . recreational pharmacies.
Like the mafia after prohibition, I assume that either the gangs or the individuals would mostly move into other, less lucrative forms of crime--there are hardly any unions left worth taking over, and the casino business is spoken for. That means the both the inner cities and other places would probably see a spike in interpersonal crime (though possibly counteracted by a fall in crimes committed by drug addicts). And the inner cities might become, for a time, even poorer than they are now--although in one sense richer, since they wouldn't have to endure the violence created by the drug trade.
Over the longer term, one would hope that absent the lure of the really big money at the top, kids would look for legal work, and stay in school. But in the short term, the effects seem considerably more mixed. Or so my first thoughts run, anyway. What do y'all think?
Update: This seems on point
Stop Snitching 2 begins with a nod to the controversy created by the original. "Let me clear something up," Bethea says, filmed while sitting on the staircase of his studio in West Baltimore.
He says, "People are surviving the only way they know how." That's why, he says, there's a strong feeling that drug dealers should not give police the names of other criminals in an effort to save themselves. That's why, he says, a little boy is shown with a gun.
I don't want to spoil anything, but keep watching... you don't know how right you are...
There's a lot of good public choice theories to apply to the show too.
I don't want to spoil anything, but keep watching... you don't know how right you are...
There's a lot of good public choice theories to apply to the show too.
Update this post after you've watched Season 3!
Megan,
I, too, am late to The Wire (and am generally a late-adapter of all things trendy) and I've also studied the drug war for the better part of a decade. Your analysis seems about right to me.
I can't say I see any downside to drug legalization for the inner city, except for the purveyors of sneakers, jewlery and electronics. (Have you been to a downtown like Newark or Paterson, NJ? That's all there is in business!)
Those corner boys may not have a corner to work anymore, but even if they couldn't run a recreational pharmacy, they could still get a job stocking its shelves or providing security!
Just wait for Season 3. They are way ahead of you.
Isn't there the possibility that even if all drugs were legalized, the illegal drug trade wouldn't just suddenly disappear? They already have the business infrastructure in place, and now the cost of doing business for them is lowered. And couldn't they offer a better price than the, uh, recreational pharmacies? What is the market price for cocaine anyway? Might the drug dealer be able to supply at a lower cost than the pharmacy that would need to pay lots of taxes (think cigarette tax), retail space, insurance, and pharmacy wages to workers (I assume the government would just let anyone sell the stuff even after legalizing it)?
And the crime from drug addicts wouldn't go away either. For the ones who are so addicted that they need to commit crimes to get their fix, they're no more employable after drugs are legalized, and they'll still be addicted.
I'm with you, Megan, I say legalize it.. I'm not sure that it would necessarily eliminate jobs as it would just legitimize them. People already involved in cultivation of natural products e.g. cannabis, opium poppies, coca, magic mushrooms could run legitimate farms, and people involved in distribution could get jobs in convenience stores, head shops, and the like, with the influx of business that used to be under the table. Psychedelic production would probably go to the pharmaceutical companies, but most of the clandestine chemists are clever enough to get chem degrees anyway (or already have them), so I am sure they would do OK as well. Not to mention the fact that a fair tax could help subsidize government social programs e.g. public schools, welfare, and health care. Taxes on currently legal "vice" such as tobacco and alcohol, and profits from state-run gambling operations (don't get me started on that) are a huge revenue stream. Legalization would be a net benefit to society and the economy in general.
I have to wonder about the sampling methods used to come up with the statistic that the average drug dealer makes less than minimum wage. In any case, people who pursue it as a career probably appreciate the fact that no formal education is required, there is no boss, you can set your own hours, and work from home. ;)
Hei Lun, I think legalization would act to lower the prices of most recreational drugs, even given taxes and markup at the store. Prices are high on the black market to justify the risk and because of the scarcity of the product. Why would people track down a neighborhood corner dealer when they could just go to the local convenience store? Why would the dealer bother when they would hardly be making any profit after having to undercut the neighborhood store all the time? Not to mention the economies of scale possible when the market is legitimized, and competition in the marketplace. What if 7-Eleven is having a sale on weed this week? The off-license dealer might as well pack up and go home. Sure, there might be a few, just as there are some people today who still brew moonshine or smuggle cigarettes, but it would be negligible by any comparison.
I think this "reefer madness" idea of addicts stealing to get enough money to feed their "fix" is ridiculous. For every one person who does this (I have known a few), there are probably thousands of regular people who work real jobs and pay for their recreational drugs with their own money (I know many). What about people who don't use drugs and steal? A thief is just a thief. People who use recreational drugs responsibly are no less employable than people who drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes; it is just the ridiculous pre-employment drug screenings - a violation of personal privacy - that make it more difficult for the users to find gainful employment. Drug prohibition doesn't prevent people from using drugs and doesn't prevent addiction; it just artificially makes the lives of people who do choose to use drugs (and people who are unfortunate enough to become addicted) more difficult.
If you're curious, I believe the "retail" market price for cocaine maybe five years ago in my area was something like $90-100 for an "eight ball", which is by convention 3.5 grams. Not 3.5 grams of pure cocaine, but maybe 50% cut - if that. That's more expensive than gold. Legalized market price even with markup and an entirely ridiculous tax wouldn't be anywhere close.
One thought to keep in mind in discussing crime reduction from legalization is the small-time dealer/addict who deals exclusively to support a habit. If that market goes away, he's got no choice but to turn to other forms of crime to get the money. Maybe the price drop from legalization would eliminate that problem, or maybe not, especially for the unemployed.
I can believe there are "thousands" of pot smokers who support the habit while working productively, and that such use is irrelevant to their employability. I'm less sanguine about those tweaking on meth or crack. I'd say that level of intoxication is a real workplace safety issue, and I have my doubts about their ability to maintain sobriety for an 8-hour workday.
I’m starting to move away from being in favor of legalization. After reading some of the materials provided during the previous discussion on 1% of adults being imprisoned and learning that there is six times as much violence committed by people using drugs as people selling drugs, I’m warming to the argument in favor of making them as hard to get as possible.
Add to that the fact that no one (aside from a few libertine idiots) is in favor of legalizing them for minors which seems to be where the majority of the illegal trafficking is directed today, the “benefits” of legalizing them for adults would probably not eliminate the criminal market*. In which case all of the hopes of lower prices and criminals being displaced by legitimate licensed suppliers probably isn’t going to happen to the extent some are hoping. And its just as likely we could see an increase in violence and other crimes by making drugs even easier to access which might offset any “benefits” from legalization for adults.
* And let me be first to say that the authors of Freakonomics are full of BS is they’re suggesting that but for the hopes of getting rich selling crack in their hood, drug dealers would have tried to get earn honest living at a regular 9-5 job as opposed to turning to burglary, mugging or some other crime.
Thorley, I don't think the crime reduction issue is one of turning every street dealer from a life of blackmarket drug sales over to selling cell phones at a RadioShack. Rather, it's that some of them will find more productive occupations after the collapse of the old one, and moreover, the next generation will definitely have a better shot at moving upward because they will have fewer incentives to slouch into the criminal lifestyles that the blackmarket enables.
Years ago I compared the price of morphine and Dilaudid to heroin; the legal ones were drastically cheaper, perhaps by a factor of five. There are sound economic reasons why the rest of our retail is different from drug dealing.
The effect of legalization no one has mentioned is the user response to a major price reduction. My guess is that we'll have to write off a certain percentage of the population if everything is legal.
If drugs are legalized, there are only two options left:
- illegal gambling (as you say, casinos are already spoken for).
- prostitution
Of course, since illegal gambling can already be found elsewhere, only prostitution looks likely to continue to bring in any outside money to the neighborhoods.
If, however, we then go the way of Nevada, and legalize and regulate prostitution, the inner cities might actually start growing back. What a shock to the system!
Thorley,
In regards to the hand-wringing over minors and drugs and all that, I'll remind you of something I find rather astute that the late WFB remarked regarding the legalization of drugs and this very same worry. He said, and rightly so, that it is far easier on any college campus, to get a hold of some pot than it is to go out to a liquor store and buy some booze, precisely because an illegal trade has no discretion. For better or worse, and purely out of necessity, it is motivated only by an obscene surplus demand.
By the way, I'm glad someone finally mentioned Ho-ing. As I'm sure many of you all know, it's tough out there without a pimp, and without the illegal drug trade to fall back on, the spontaneous order of the oldest profession seems a natural replacement.
As everyone else has said, keep watching (as if you need prompting to do so).
You should actually feel quite lucky to have just discovered The Wire. You have before you many more episodes left to watch than the rest of us.
Ah, Thorley, but correlation does not necessarily imply causation. I don't think so much that it is recreational drugs that cause ordinary people to become violent, rather, many people who are violent have also used recreational drugs. Sometimes I think the greatest myth underlying prohibition is the idea that drugs "make people bad". Rather, it just so happens that many people who are bad either by nature or by nurture, use drugs. You can't save them; they are unlikely to care whether it is illegal or not. Why punish all the otherwise ordinary and productive folks who also like to use drugs?
Let me get ridiculous for a moment and consider some of the more notable episodes of violence in recent history. How about.. the 9/11 hijackers? Probably cold sober devout Muslims, every one of them. The Virginia Tech massacre? The NIU massacre? The closest these guys probably got to mind altering substances was taking some supposedly therapeutic prescription antidepressants. If you've read Kaczynski's manifesto (an interesting bit of work), he was basically against drug use. When was the last time you heard of a pot smoker going off and shooting up a classroom? Does correlation imply causation here? Perhaps it's sobriety we should legislate against? :)
I'm not necessarily saying every recreational drug should be legal; I will concede that. But some should.
"That means the [sic] both the inner cities and other places would probably see a spike in interpersonal crime (though possibly counteracted by a fall in crimes committed by drug addicts)."
"Interpersonal crime" is the funniest thing I've read in years. It reminds me of reading a 1950s legal opinion about a mixed-race marriage where the judge's preliminary statement of facts pointed out that the black man and the white woman had "intermarried" some years before
thus giving rise to the lawsuit. What exactly does "intermarry" mean? I have no idea. Perhaps Megan can tell us what "interpersonal crime" is--and how it differs from "crime".
Question for those who are against legalization because of the affect on neighborhoods:
Why not legalize drugs and then make it just has hard to buy as if they were illegal?
Possible ways of doing this include 1) High taxes 2) making people wait in line for an hour, or pay an even higher premium 3) Diluting the effect 4) Requiring a first time buyer to give the name of a friend - who then gets called to inform him of the buying decision
If legal drugs and illegal drugs were equally difficult to get, then about half the people would buy legally, the other half illegally. This would half the profits from the drug trade. If you half the profits, you half the bribes and half the money paid for muscle. This doubles the effectiveness of the police, who can now concentrate their efforts on the remaining dealers, driving up the illegal price. Now the legal price is better than the illegal price, which means more people try it, sending the illegal business into a downward spiral.
The net effect is that you have eliminated the illegal trade completely, while making it just as difficult to buy drugs as before. In fact, it's even better, because you differentiate between first time buyers and addicts. By making the price exceptionally high for first time buyers, you can prevent people form getting addicted in the first place.
Also, I don't think you'd see a huge rise in interpersonal crime. Organized crime can only exist in a where there are victim-less crimes. Victimless crimes are infinitely harder to police than direct crimes, because there is no one close to the crime who has a direct interest in seeing it solved.
Perhaps Megan can tell us what "interpersonal crime" is--and how it differs from "crime".
Since I have a two time-zone advantage on MM, and a perverse love of entertaining twittery for the sake of the entertainment it provides, I'll take a shot: "interpersonal crime" is violent crime that occurs by an individual person against another individual person, and in this context, probably in the particular case of a mugging or retributive act.
No need to thank me; it was nothing, really. I read the post and have a basic grasp of English, tiddy-boom.
If drugs were legalized, corporations such as Budweiser and Altria would start selling drugs and put the corner drug dealers out of business. The denizens of inner-city Baltimore would be worse off. They are poor because they have little human capital. That wouldn't change if drugs were legalized. Instead of black guys with do-rags managing the local drug business it would be overweight white guys in khakis -- the demographic group that runs most local operations in corporate America.
I have to admit he's (cf. election post/Huckabee) kind of charming, like your good-hearted Uncle Ned who believes in free silver, and fairies.
These 'legalize drug' discussion have a similar kind of quality. Notice we've also already had the 'bodice ripping' discussion of Ho's here. Basically, the reason the voter hasn't made drugs legal is that 'he,' knowing what's good for him, doesn't want drugs to be normative. That doesn't mean they can't be normative anywhere; if the people in the projects insist on being passive-agressvie refuseniks, well charity only demands so much. But workplaces he doesn't want to see normative drug use. Now kids do generally not use at some point, if they have gotten into it, because they want to 'go on to something better.' That demands that drug use not be generally normative. So you've got to have a legal structure to make that, legal use but not normative use, possible.
"Why not legalize drugs and then make it just has hard to buy as if they were illegal?" Patrick Fitzsimmons
Then on top of having a legal drug you'd have a black-market as well. Oxycontin is legal so far as I know. Getting it legally is limited so there is a black-market. There are cases of drivers who carry it being carjacked or pharmacies being attacked for it.
Likewise if narcotics have the same age limit as alcohol or tobacco you'll have plenty of under-the-table dealings for them.
In the case of the Netherlands you have a nation that was never as violent as us in the first place. In the US the example of a place we have that's legalized stuff like gambling and prostitution is Nevada. Nevada's violent crime rates are very much above US averages and traditionally are among the top-5 in the nation. Possibly this is irrelevant as they've not legalized drugs, but as the argument is on "victimless crimes" legalization seems to have had little effect.
"Organized crime can only exist in a where there are victim-less crimes." PF
It sounds plausible on the surface, but what is the support of this theory? Many of the world's organized crimes syndicates I know of started out as rebel groups or protection rackets. Organizations have a certain survival skill and can sometimes adjust to changes. So why wouldn't organized crime be able to shift to extortion, fraud, theft, protecting criminals from cops, etc? And although smuggling might be the main element now, I'm wondering how you think a society could make it where there's no rules against smuggling of any sort? What about smuggling in sex-slaves, endangered animals, bootlegged DVDs, weapons, or stolen antiquities? (Going by ones I believe are already linked to organized crime) Should the slave trade be re-legalized?
BTW: The Netherlands does have gangsters.
Another nice thing about being a late adopter of The Wire is that you won't have to wait so much between seasons. By the time you finish Season 4, 5 will nearly be out on DVD. I started late, but not quite so much, so I started experiencing a one year delay after 3.
Personally, I think Season 1 was the best of the show. 2 and 3, though excellent, were not quite as good. The jury on 4 is still out, and I have no opinion on 5.
This thread is useless without Omar. :)
As was often the case, the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan had something worthwhile to say on the issue. Seek out and read "Iatrogenic Government," an article published in (I believe) "The American Scholar" 15-20 years ago.
Season 5 was definitely one of the best. They managed to bring back every major (living) character who was part of the previous seasons and showed how each of their storied ended up. My only complaint was that it was the shortest season and the final montage left me wishing for more even though most of the character’s stories seem to have ended.
I have a...a perverse love of entertaining twittery for the sake of the entertainment it provides
Hey, me too! Mortimer Madler, the lexical world's answer to the tax protester. Since you answered one of his questions, I'll do the other:
What exactly does "intermarry" mean? I have no idea.
There's nothing like admitting you don't know (and can't be bothered to look up) the meaning of a perfectly ordinary, if slightly archaic, word. Intermarriage is the marriage of two people of different groups--racial, ethnic, religious, etc.
Thus these two sentences are unremarkable and comprehensible to pretty much everyone but you:
1) Spanish colonists of the new world were more inclined to intermarry than their English counterparts.
2) Strictly observant members of most religions are usually forbidden to intermarry.
Considering how you constantly bang on about what a moron our gracious hostess is, you might consider grabbing a dictionary (or heck, Google) before flaunting your ignorance.
Thomas R:
There's a huge difference between the black market for Oxycontin and the black market for the illegal drugs.
Additionally, if you were smart about legalization, you could make it far harder for youth to obtain drugs. Imagine each dosage had a trace amount of unique chemical identifier. If that dosage was ever found in the hands of a youth, they could trace it back to original buyer and punish them severely.
Gambling proves my point. It used to be organized crime ran numbers games and gambling houses in every city. Now with Indian Casinos and the state lottery, that crime has largely disappeared. Yet it's regulated enough that excess gambling has not created other social problems.
As for Vegas, originally it legalized gambling but made it illegal for a corporation to own a casino. Thus organized crime owned many of the casinos. In the 70's the legislature changed the law, corporations bought the casinos, and organized crime was driven out. Now the crime rate of Vegas is less than Phoenix.
Prohibition, of course, is the classic evidence in support of my argument.
I should have rephrased to say: "Organized crime will thrive in proportion to the existence of lucrative, victimless crimes" So you don't have to legalize everything. But the more you can legalize without creating other social problems, the better your crime situation will be.
"Now the crime rate of Vegas is less than Phoenix." PF
That's just an argument for Phoenix being a really cruddy town. Besides which Phoenix is lower in violent crime, exempting murder.
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004902.html
In addition to that Southern cities like Baltimore and New Orleans were more violent than Northern ones even before drug prohibition. There's several economic and cultural factors which wouldn't change by legalizing drugs.
Have a good time in Hamsterdam.
Amsterdam itself might be backing off a bit.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/20080306-0903-dutch-drugs.html
WRT Amsterdam, the 'backing off' from their famous (classic) 'liberal' approach to cannabis and other drugs is a result of both international pressures from nations still practicing drug prohibitions vastly stricter than the Nederlanders and the domestic rise of the small but loud 'conservative' forces who attribute the social ills being experienced there to 'liberal' ideas, whether that attribution is valid or not...to which drug usage is seen as a major example.
As is all too often the case, the situation is much more complex than that, but the complexities are rejected in favor of attempting to apply Alexander the Great's Gordian Knot solution to what amounts to delicate cancer surgery; it just makes matters worse.