Drug
Legalization: How to Radically Lower the Number of Murders in New Orleans
DIGG THIS
New Orleans
is now undergoing an unprecedented murder rate, even for the Big
Uneasy. How can we dig our way out of this morass?
The usual suspect
solutions have all been tried, have not worked in the past, and
will not help us now. According to the conventional wisdom, the
way to stop people from shooting at each other is to improve our
public schools, promote day care, stop the drug trade with stiffer
sentences, start midnight basketball leagues, bring in the social
workers, promote religion, subsidize parenting skills, introduce
citizenship and ethics classes in high school, this list of ineptitude
goes on and on.
These "remedies"
are either focused way too far in the long run to be even relevant
to our critical short-run problems, or never have addressed and
cannot solve such challenges, or are actually counterproductive:
exacerbating murder rates, not diminishing them.
So, let us
take a deep breath, open our minds, and consider something radical,
way off the beaten track: let us legalize drugs, all of them
without exception, preeminently including marijuana, cocaine, and,
yes, heroin. (Legalization is sharply to be distinguished from favoring
the use of these substances, something I strongly oppose.)
What does this
have to do with the gigantic number of murders now afflicting New
Orleans? Plenty. An inordinate amount of these episodes consists
of drug dealers shooting each other in turf wars. End the prohibition,
and this viciousness stops right in its tracks. Nor are these murders
likely to end any time soon. Things of this sort were kept down
to a dull roar before Katrina. A sort of equilibrium was attained.
Every gang knew its place, at least roughly. "Property rights"
in street corners and back alleyways were semi-established. Yes,
from time to time there was a bit of blood letting, as criminals
served their sentences and tried to reclaim what used to be "their"
territory, or, as dealers were killed or retired, and mini-wars
broke out until the new pecking order was established.
But then came
the failure of the levees. "Our" dealers tried to set
up shop in Houston, Memphis, Atlanta and other such refuges. The
local denizens did not appreciate that one bit. Conflagrations broke
out there. Then, as the Crescent City began to repopulate, heroin
entrepreneurs began trickling back along with these crowds. Paradoxically,
this increased crime in the temporary refuge cities from which these
gangsters were emigrating, and also in New Orleans as they arrived
back here. For both the egress and ingress set up jurisdictional
disputes over turf, and the battle lines were drawn again and again
in blood. This inflated murder rate will only recede to pre-Katrina
levels, which were horrible enough in that bygone era, when post-Hurricane
movement of population slows down to previous levels. That point
may not be reached for decades.
It is thus
time, it is past time, to drain the swamps instead of following
our present policy of fighting the alligators. Legalizing addictive
drugs, every last one of them, will stop all this gang warfare for
sure, and immediately.
Why? If marijuana,
heroin, etc., were legal, it would be sold in ordinary legitimate
stores such as pharmacies. These would replace the present fly-by-night
murderous operators. Customers would simply rather purchase brand
name cocaine, replete with labels, money back guarantees in case
of defective products, as in the case of all other consumption goods.
Standard business ventures have a comparative advantage over hoodlums
whose only specialty resides in violence.
When alcohol
was prohibited (1920–1933) gangs fought it out in the streets with
machine guns for the right to sell their bathtub gin. Innocent bystanders
were killed in the cross fire, just as at present. Backwoods stills
killed still more, with their battery acid products. Nowadays, peace
reigns in this industry. Johnny Walker and Four Roses compete with
each other not with bullets, but in terms of the traditional commercial
aspects of price, advertising, availability, quality, reputation,
etc. The Mafia is no longer involved. No one dies, no one,
in the creation, manufacture, wholesaling, distribution, transportation,
retailing of this product. For similar reasons, the same beneficial
effects will ensue when, and as soon as, we legalize drugs.
But will we
not die like flies from these addictive substances once they are
legalized? There is no more reason to think so than to believe that
when the prohibition of booze ended, it encouraged an orgy of drunkenness.
Pretty much the same people who liquored up before 1920 did so after
1933, and there is every reason to believe that drug legalization
would follow the same path. Those who now abuse drugs will still
likely continue to do so. Is there anyone, now, who refrains from
their use simply because they are illegal? Yes both drugs and alcohol
will remain medical problems post-legalization, but the crime
will be eradicated from both.
So far, I have
attempted to show that the last best hope for our city in eliminating
the scourge of murders presently besetting us was to legalize drugs.
Why? Because a disproportionate number of these capital crimes take
place between drug gangs fighting over turf, and the innocents caught
in the cross fire. Legalize heroin, cocaine and marijuana, and such
conflagrations will immediately cease, as they did when alcohol
prohibition was ended in 1933. I now wish to consider, and reject,
several objections to this very sensible plan.
1. If people
drive while under the influence of drugs, the enormous increase
in traffic fatalities will more than offset any saving of lives
due to the elimination of murderous wars over drug turf.
Not so, not
so. Drugs can be treated in roughly the same manner as alcohol.
It is legal to use the latter product, but not to drive while intoxicated.
In like manner, it would no longer be a crime to erase brain cells
with heroin, but it would be if you then get behind the wheel of
a car.
2. This plan
to legalize drugs would give a social imprimatur to abuse such substances.
Children would be led to try them.
No, no, no.
One cannot infer approval from mere legalization of an act or substance.
Abortion, gambling, prostitution, alcohol, homosexuality and other
victimless (ex)crimes are no longer criminal offences in civilized
societies, but the attitude of society toward them is one of strict
neutrality, not approval. Right now, addictive drugs have about
them the lure of the forbidden; youngsters are more likely to be
tempted by them. Under legalization, no drug purveyors would hang
around school yards, as they now do, and try to get kids to try
their deleterious wares.
3. Drug legalization
would empty the city to an even greater degree than at present
There is one
added benefit to New Orleans from implementing such a proposal:
we will have gained for ourselves a new bouncing baby industry.
Just as Las Vegas evolved from a stretch of desert into a world-class
city when it was the only one to offer gambling, so will the Big
Easy surpass its previous preeminence (it was once the leading city
in the entire South) when it alone offers legal drugs. This industry
all by itself, will put us back on the map.
4. The state
and federal courts will not allow New Orleans, all on its own, to
declare itself a free enterprise zone in this regard. So, even if
legalization would radically reduce our local murder rate, we will
not be allowed to implement it.
Right now,
like it or not, we are a tremendous burden on the rest of the state,
and indeed the country. We could do far better on our own than with
our palms up, begging for charity. As well, the federales owe us
big. The flooding was the fault of their Army Corp of Engineers
that built the porous levies. It was their FEMA that added insult
to injury in Katrina’s aftermath, by preventing others from rescuing
us, while doing nothing much on its own in this regard. It would
come with particular ill grace for them to object to a plan that
would, one, stop this horrid spate of murders cold in its tracks,
and two, put us back on our feet, economically speaking.
5. But is it
not scurrilous to be associated with such a product? New Orleans
as the drug capital of the country is something that would disgrace
us.
I answer that
it is far more debilitating to take on our present role as the murder
capital of the country, on a per capita basis. Would you rather
have blood running in the streets?
6. The Harrison
Narcotics Act of 1914 was implemented for a good purpose: to save
ourselves from the scourge of drugs.
 Has
it succeeded? To ask this question is to answer it. People can purchase
addictive substances in any major city in the country. No, this
"war" has failed, like so many other such initiatives
undertaken by government. The motivation behind this legislation
had nothing to do with protecting the public in any case. It was
pure and simple a racist anti-Chinese measure, in an attempt to
criminalize them for using opium dens.
7. We are on
the verge of winning the drug war. This is not the time to "cut
and run."
The
drug war is an utter and abysmal failure. And necessarily so. Every
time a successful interdiction occurs, drug prices and profits rise,
and this only strengthens the drug gangs. They are impregnable to
such tactics.
 New
Orleans, let us legalize drugs! We have only to lose our title as
a place where people are shot down in cold blood en masse. Mayor
Nagin, let’s go free enterprise. We won’t be "chocolate"
city; we’ll be drug city instead. Safer, and a lot more prosperous.
This article
is based on two essays in The Maroon, the student newspaper
of Loyola University.
January
27, 2007
Dr.
Block [send him mail] is a
professor of economics at Loyola University New Orleans, and a senior
fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He is the author of Defending
the Undefendable.
Copyright
© 2007 LewRockwell.com
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