The following is reprinted from The Pragmatist, August 1988.  Some of theexamples and data are dated, but the arguments are still valid.(rbs)			 TWELVE REASONS TO LEGALIZE DRUGS   There are no panaceas in the world but, for social afflictions, legalizingdrugs comes possibly as close as any single policy could.  Removing legalpenalties from the production, sale and use of "controlled substances"would alleviate at least a dozen of our biggest social or politicalproblems.   With proposals for legalization finally in the public eye, there mightbe a use for some sort of catalog listing the benefits of legalization.For advocates, it is an inventory of facts and arguments.  For opponents,it is a record of the problems they might be helping to perpetuate.  The list is intended both as a resource for those wishing to participate inthe legalization debate and as a starting point for those wishing to getdeeper into it.   Are we ready to stop wringing our hands and start solving problems?1.  Legalizing drugs would make our streets and homes safer.   As Jeffrey Rogers Hummel notes ("Heroin: The Shocking Story," April 1988),estimates vary widely for the proportion of violent and property crimerelated to drugs.  Forty percent is a midpoint figure.  In an October 1987survey by Wharton Econometrics for the U.S. Customs Service, the 739 policechiefs responding "blamed drugs for a fifth of the murders and rapes, aquarter car thefts, two-fifths of robberies and assaults and half thenation's burglaries and thefts."   The theoretical and statistical links between drugs and crime are wellestablished.  In a 2 1/2-year study of Detroit crime, Lester P. Silverman,former associate director of the National Academy of Sciences' Assembly ofBehavior and Social Sciences, found that a 10 percent increase in the priceof heroin alone "produced an increase of 3.1 percent  total property crimesin poor nonwhite neighborhoods."  Armed robbery jumped 6.4 percent andsimple assault by 5.6 percent throughout the city.   The reasons are not difficult to understand.  When law enforcementrestricts the supply of drugs, the price of drugs rises.  In 1984, akilogram of cocaine worth $4000 in Colombia sold at wholesale for $30,000,and at retail in the United States for some $300,000.  At the time a DrugEnforcement Administration spokesman noted, matter-of-factly, that thewholesale price doubled in six months "due to crackdowns on producers andsmugglers in Columbia and the U.S."  There are no statistics indicating theadditional number of people killed or mugged thanks to the DEA's crackdownon cocaine.   For heroin the factory-to-retail price differential is even greater.According to U.S. News & World report, in 1985 a gram of pure heroin inPakistan cost $5.07, but it sold for $2425 on the street in America--nearlya five-hundredfold jump.   The unhappy consequence is that crime also rises, for at least fourreasons:*   Addicts must shell out hundreds of times the cost of goods, so theyoften must turn to crime to finance their habits.  The higher the pricegoes, the more they need to steal to buy the same amount.*   At the same time, those who deal or purchase the stuff find themselvescarrying extremely valuable goods, and become attractive targets forassault.*  Police officers and others suspected of being informants for lawenforcement quickly become targets for reprisals.*  The streets become literally a battleground for "turf" among competingdealers, as control over a particular block or intersection can netthousands of additional drug dollars per day.   Conversely, if and when drugs are legalized, their price will collapseand so will the sundry drug-related motivations to commit crime.  Consumerswill no longer need to steal to support their habits. A packet of cocainewill be as tempting to grab from its owner as a pack of cigarettes istoday.  And drug dealers will be pushed out of the retail market by knownretailers.  When was the last time we saw employees of Rite Aid pharmaciesshoot it out with Thrift Drugs for a corner storefront?   When drugs become legal, we will be able to sleep in our homes and walkthe streets more safely.  As one letter-writer to the Philadelphia Inquirerput it, "law-abiding citizens will be able to enjoy not living in fear ofassault and burglary."2.  It would put an end to prison overcrowding.   Prison overcrowding is a serious and persistent problem.  It makes theprison environment, violent and faceless to begin with, even more dangerousand dehumanizing.  According to the 1988 Statistical Abstract of the United States, between1979 and 1985 the number of people in federal and state prisons and localjails grew by 57.8 percent, nine time faster than the general population.  Governments at all levels keep building more prisons, but the number ofprisoners keeps outpacing the capacity to hold them.  According to theFederal Bureau of Prisons' 1985 Statistical Report, as of September 30 ofthat year federal institutions held 35,959 prisoners-41 percent over therated prison capacity of 25,638.  State prisons were 114 percent ofcapacity in 1986.  Of 31,346 sentenced prisoners in federal institutions, those in for druglaw violations were the largest single category, 9487. (A total of 4613were in prison but not yet sentenced under various charges.)  Legalizing drugs would immediately relieve the pressure on the prisonsystem, since there would no longer be "drug offenders" to incarcerate.And, since many drug users would no longer need to commit violent orproperty crime to pay for their habits, there would be fewer "real"criminals to house in the first place. Instead of building more prisons, wecould pocket the money and still be safer.  Removing the 9487 drug inmates would leave 26,472.  Of those, 7200 werein for assault, burglary, larceny-theft, or robbery.  If the proportion ofsuch crimes that is related to drugs is 40 percent, without drug lawsanother 2900 persons would never have made it to federal prison.  Theinmates who remained would be left in a less cruel, degrading environment.If we repealed the drug laws, we could eventually bring the prisonpopulation down comfortably below the prison's rated capacity.3.  Drug legalization would free up police resources to fight crimesagainst people and property.   The considerable police efforts now expended against drug activity anddrug-related crime could be redirected toward protecting innocent peoplefrom those who would still commit crime in the absence of drug laws.  Thepolice could protect us more effectively, as it could focus resources oncatching rapists, murderers and the remaining perpetrators of crimesagainst people and property.4.  It would unclog the court system.   If you are accused of a crime, it takes months to bring you to trial.Guilty or innocent, you must live with the anxiety of impending trial untilthe trial finally begins.  The process is even more sluggish for civilproceedings.   There simply aren't enough judges to handle the skyrocketing caseload.Because it would cut crime and eliminate drugs as a type of crime,legislation would wipe tens of thousands of cases off the court docketsacross the continent, permitting the rest to move sooner and faster.Prosecutors would have more time to handle each case; judges could makemore considered opinions.   Improved efficiency at the lower levels would have a ripple effect onhigher courts.  Better decisions in the lower courts would yield fewergrounds for appeals, reduing the caseloads of appeals courts; and in anyevent there would be fewer cases to review in the first place.5.   It would reduce official corruption.   Drug-related police corruption takes one of two major forms.  Policeofficers can offer drug dealers protection in their districts for a shareof the profits (or demand a share under threat of exposure). Or they canseize dealer's merchandise for sale themselves.   Seven current or former Philadelphia police officers were indicted May31 on charges of falsifying records of money and drugs confiscated fromdealers. During a house search, one man turned over $20,000 he had madefrom marijuana sales, but the officers gave him a "receipt" for $1870.Another dealer, reports The Inquirer, "told the grand jury he was chargedwith possession of five pounds of marijuana, although 11 pounds were foundin his house."   In Miami, 59 officers have been fired or suspended since 1985 forsuspicion of wrongdoing.  The police chief and investigators expect thenumber eventually to approach 100.  As The Palm Beach Post reported, "Thatwould mean about one in 100 officers on the thousand man force will havebeen tainted by one form of scandal or another."   Most of the 59 have been accused of trafficking, possessing or usingillegal drugs.  In the biggest single case, 17 officers allegedlyparticipated in a ring that stole $15 million worth of cocaine from dealers"and even traffic violators."  What distinguishes the Miami scandal is that "Police are alleged to bedrug traffickers themselves, not just protectors of criminals who areengaged in illegal activities," said The post.  According to James Frye, acriminologist at American University in Washington, the gravity of thesituation in Miami today is comparable to Prohibition-era Chicago in the1920s and '30s.   It is apt comparison.  And the problem is not limited to Miami andPhiladelphia.  The astronomical profits from the illegal drug trade are apowerful incentive on the part of law enforcement agents to partake fromthe proceeds.   Legalizing the drug trade outright would eliminate this inducement tocorruption and help to clean up the police's image.  Eliminatingdrug-related corruption cases would further reduce the strain on thecourts, freeing judges and investigators to handle other cases morethoroughly and expeditiously.6.  Legalization would save tax money.    Efforts to interdict the drug traffic alone cost $6.2 billion in 1986,according to Wharton Econometrics of Bala Cynwyd, Pa.  If we ad the cost oftrying and incarcerating users, traffickers, and those who commit crime topay for their drugs, the tab runs well above $10 billion.   The crisis in inmate housing would disappear, saving taxpayers theexpense of building more prisons in the future.   As we've noted above, savings would be redirected toward better policeprotection and speedier judicial service.  Or it could be converted intosavings for taxpayers.  Or the federal portion of the costs could beapplied toward the budget deficit.  For a change, it's a happy problem toponder.  But it takes legalization to make it possible.7.  It would cripple organized crime.   The Mafia (heroin), Jamaican gangs (crack), and the Medellin Cartel(cocaine) stand to lose billions in drug profits from legalization.  On aper-capita basis, members of organized crime, particularly at the top,stand to lose the most from legalizing the drug trade.   The underworld became big business in the United States when alcohol wasprohibited.  Few others would risk setting up the distribution networks,bribing officials or having to shoot up a policeman or competitor once in awhile.  When alcohol was re-legalized, reputable manufacturers took over.The risk and the high profits went out of the alcohol trade.  Even if theywanted to keep control over it, the gangsters could not have targeted everymanufacturer and every beer store.   The profits from illegal alcohol were minuscule compared to the yieldfrom today's illegal drugs.  They are the underworld's last great,greatest, source of illegal income--dwarfing anything to be madefromgambling, prostitution or other vice.  Legalizing drugs would knock out this huge prop from under organizedcrime.  Smugglers and pushers would have to go aboveboard or go out ofbusiness.  There simply wouldn't be enough other criminal endeavors toemploy them all.   If we are concerned about the influence of organized crime ongovernment, industry and our own personal safety, we could strike no singlemore damaging blow against today's gangsters than to legalize drugs.8.  Legal drugs would be safer.  Legalization is a consumer protectionissue.   Because it is illegal, the drug trade today lacks many of the consumersafety features common to other markets:  instruction sheets, warninglabels, product quality control, manufacturer accountability.  Driving itunderground makes any product, including drugs, more dangerous than itneeds to be.  Nobody denies that currently illegal drugs can be dangerous.  But so canaspirin, countless other over-the-counter drugs and common household items;yet the proven hazards of matches, modeling glue and lawn mowers are notused as reasons to make them all illegal.  Practically anything can kill if used in certain ways.  Like heroin,salt can make you sick or dead if you take enough of it.  The point is tolearn what the threshold is, and to keep below it.  That many things cankill is not a reason to prohibit them all--it is a reason to find out howto handle products to provide the desired action safely.  The same goes fordrugs.   Today's drug consumer literally doesn't know what he's buying.  Thestuff is so valuable that sellers have an incentive to "cut" (dilute) theproduct with foreign substances that look like the real thing.  Most streetheroin is only 3 to 6 percent pure;  street cocaine, 10 to 15 percent.  Since purity varies greatly, consumers can never be really sure how muchto take to produce the desired effects.  If you're used to 3 percent heroinand take a 5 percent dose, suddenly you've nearly doubled your intake.  Manufacturers offering drugs on the open market would face differentincentives than pushers.  They rely on name-brand recognition to buildmarket share, and on customer loyalty to maintain it.  There would be apowerful incentive to provide a product of uniform quality:  killingcustomers or losing them to competitors is not a proven way to success.Today, dealers can make so much off a single sale that the incentive tocultivate a clientele is weak. In fact, police persecution makes itimperative to move on, damn the customers.  Pushers don't provide labels or instructions, let alone mailingaddresses.  The illegal nature of the business makes such thingsunnecessary or dangerous to the enterprise.  After legalization,pharmaceutical companies could safely try to win each other's customers--orguard against liability suits--with better information and more reliableproducts.  Even pure heroin on the open market would be safer than today's impuredrugs.  As long as customers know what they're getting and what it does,they can adjust their dosages to obtain the intended effect safely.  Information is the best protection against the potential hazards ofdrugs or any other product.  Legalizing drugs would promote consumer healthand safety.9.  Legalization would help stem the spread of AIDS and other diseases.    As D.R. Blackmon notes ("Moral Deaths," June 1988), drug prohibitionhas helped propagate AIDS among intravenous drug users.   Because IV drug users utilize hypodermic needles to inject heroin andother narcotics, access to needles is restricted.  The dearth of needlesleads users to share them.  If one IV user has infected blood and someenters the needle as it is pulled out, the next user may shoot theinfectious agent directly into his own bloodstream.   Before the AIDS epidemic, this process was already known to spread otherdiseases, principally hepatitis B.  Legalizing drugs would eliminate themotivation to restrict the sale of hypodermic needles.  With needles cheapand freely available, the drug users would have little need to share themand risk acquiring someone else's virus.   Despite the pain and mess involved, injection became popular because, asThe Washington Times put it, "that's the way to get the biggest, longesthigh for the money."  Inexpensive, legal heroin, on the other hand, wouldenable customers to get the same effect (using a greater amount) from morehygienic methods such as smoking or swallowing--cutting further into theuse of needles and further slowing the spread of AIDS.10. Legalization would halt the erosion of other personal liberties.    Hundreds of governments and corporations have used the alleged costsof drugs to begin testing their employees for drugs.  Pennsylvania Rep.Robert Walker has embarked on a crusade to withhold the federal moneycarrot from any company or agency that doesn't guarantee a "drug-freeworkplace."   The federal government has pressured foreign countries to grant accessto bank records so it can check for "laundered" drug money.  Because drugdealers handle lots of cash, domestic banks are now required to report cashdeposits over $10,000 to the Internal Revenue Service for evidence ofillicit profit.  The concerns (excesses?) that led to all of these would disappear ipsofacto with drg legalization.  Before drugs became big business, investorscould put their money in secure banks abroad without fear of harassment.Mom-and-pop stores could deposit their cash receipts unafraid that theymight look like criminals.   Nobody makes a test for urine levels of sugar or caffeine a requirementfor employment or grounds for dismissal.  However, were they declaredillegal these would certainly become a lot riskier to use, and hence apossible target for testing "for the sake of our employees."  Legalizingtoday's illegal drugs would make them safer, deflating the drive to testfor drug use.11.  It would stabilize foreign countries and make them safer to live inand travel to.   The connection between drug traffickers and and guerrilla groups isfairly well documented (see "One More Reason," August 1987).  SouthAmerican revolutionaries have developed a symbiotic  relationship with withcoca growers and smugglers:  the guerrillas protect the growers andsmugglers in echange for cash to finance their subversive activities.  inPeru, competing guerrilla groups, the Shining Path and the Tupac Amaru,fight for the lucrative right to represent coca farmers before drugtraffickers.   Traffickers themselves are well prepared to defend their crops againstintruding government forces.  A Peruvian military helicopter was destroyedwith bazooka fire in March, 1987, and 23 police officers were killed.  Thefollowing June, drug dealers attacked a camp of national guardsmen inVenezuela, killing 13.   In Colombia, scores of police officers, more than 20 judges, twonewspaper editors, the attorney general and the justice minister have beenkilled in that country's war against cocaine traffickers.  Two supremecourt justices, including the court president, have resigned followingdeath threats.  The Palace of Justice was sacked in 1985 as guerrillasdestroyed the records of dozens of drug dealers.   "This looks like Beirut," said the mayor of Medellin, Colombia, after abomb ripped apart a city block where the reputed head of the MedellinCartel lives.  It "is a waning of where the madness of the violence thatafflicts us can bring us."   Legalizing the international drug trade would affect organized crime andsubversion abroad much as it would in the United States.  A major sourcefor guerrilla funding would disappear.  So would the motive for kidnappingor assassinating officials and private individuals.  As in the UnitedStates, ordinary Colombians and Peruvians once again could walk the streetsand travel the roads without fear of drug-related violence.  Countrieswould no longer be paralyzed by smugglers.12.  Legalization would repair U.S. relations with other countries andcurtail anti-American sentiment around the world.   a. When Honduran authorities spirited away alleged drug lord Juan MattaBallesteros and had him extradited to the United States in April, Honduransrioted in the streets and demonstrated for days at the U.S. embassy inTegucigulpa.   The action violated Honduras's constitution, which prohibitsextradition.  Regardless of what Matta may have done, many Hondurans viewedthe episode as a flagrant violation of their little country's laws, just tosatisfy the wishes of the colossus up North.   b.  When the U.S. government, in July 1986, sent Army troops andhelicopters to raid cocaine factories in Bolivia, Bolivians were outraged.The constitution "has been trampled," said the president of Bolivia's Houseof Representatives.  The country's constitution requires congressionalapproval for any foreign military presence.   c.  One thousand coca growers marched through the capital, La Paz,chanting "Death to the United States" and "Up with Coca" last May inprotest over a U.S.-sponsored bill to prohibit most coca production.  Inlate June, 5000 angry farmers overran a U.S. Drug EnforcementAdministration jungle base, demanding the 40 American soldiers and drugagents there leave immediately.  U.S. pressure on foreign governments to fight their domestic drugindustries has clearly reinforced the image of America as an imperialistbully, blithely indifferent to the concerns of other peoples.  To Boliviancoca farmers, the U.S. government is not a beacon of freedom, but a threatto their livelihoods.  To many Hondurans it seems that their governmentwill ignore its own constitution on request from Uncle Sam.  Leftistsexploit such episodes to fan nationalistic sentiment to promote theiragendas.  Legalizing the drug trade would remove some of the reasons to hateAmerica and deprive local politicians of the chance to exploit them.  TheU.S. would have a new opportunity to repair its reputation in an atmosphereof mutual respect.=============================================================================Message-ID: <161306Z09091993@anon.penet.fi>Newsgroups: alt.drugs,talk.politics.drugsFrom: an33392@anon.penet.fi (El Poeta)Date: Thu,  9 Sep 1993 16:10:18 UTCSubject: 12.reasons + 3 more[intro deleted -cak]    My only objection is that some of them are USA oriented, but Irealize that either all the EC countries agree with legalizingdrugs (that is hard to happen) or the USA have to take the first step.    The last three reasons are mine, you can (ought to) freellyreproduce them anywhere, and even corrections are wellcome (my Englishis not the best).[12 original reasons deleted -cak]                           THREE MORE REASONS13. Legalization would prevent children from consuming drugs.    They can get them now in the black market -- it is impossible tocontrol. If drugs were sold legally through pharmacies, black marketwould be inexistent, so children would have it harder to get drugs, and,even if they could manage to get them, drugs would be safer (noadulteration, impurities, etc), and  certainly better than inhaling glueor gasoline.14. Legalization would encourage pharmaceutical companies the research    of safer and healthier drugs.    Well, if you discover a drug  which produces the same effect asother one but is safer, you will win the customers of the othercompanies, and hence increase your benefits (and at the same time thehealth of your customers). Perhaps the government ought to subsidizedrug research towards substitutes for current recreational drugs safer,healthier and less or not addictive.15. Legalization could teach people to live safe with drugs.    Last but not least, the money saved from the WOSD, or just the moneyfrom drug taxes (well, they would be taxed, of course) could be redirectto the cure of drug addicts (if they want, I mean), the subsidies fordrug research, and also to teach people the _true_ real problemsassociated with drugs, and the responsible and knowledgeable use ofthem.                                             /\^/\ Hope you enjoy with this. Have a nice day.   \|_|/                                                V                                               <+>|       Poeta                                      |   -------------------------------------------------------------------------To find out more about the anon service, send mail to help@anon.penet.fi.Due to the double-blind, any mail replies to this message will be anonymized,and an anonymous id will be allocated automatically. You have been warned.Please report any problems, inappropriate use etc. to admin@anon.penet.fi.