Drug gangs will always be

Drug arrests might make a city a trifle safer
 for a few days, but any positive effects from
 such crackdowns don't last.

 Even if all of those arrested were truly drug dealers,
which is very unlikely, the busts simply created job
 openings which by now have probably been filled.


Of course, we are right to be concerned about the
very real problems of drug abuse and drug addiction.
 But although it may feel good to celebrate what
looks to be progress, scapegoating of drug peddlers
 can distract us from seeing the entire picture.
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What we don't see is that the harms caused by
drug abuse are fundamentally separate from
the harms caused by prohibition policy.


Many of the effects that we typically blame on drugs,
the rise of gangs, the violence in our streets,
 and the trend towards more dangerous drugs,
are truly the result of a policy which guarantees
 these terrible effects will occur.



It begins with the fact that we're making
all the wrong people rich.
People ask, where did all these thuggish
 drug dealers come from?

The answer is that they are an inevitable
 product of a drug policy that guarantees
outrageously high profits.



Think about it this way.
If you live in a town where there are five restaurants,
 and two of them are simultaneously shut down by the
board of health, never to reopen, it's easy to see
 that entrepreneurs would have a much stronger incentive
 to open a restaurant in your town.

This is because demand has not changed.
The same number of people still want to eat,
and food is certainly addictive.
 Plus, if restaurants are being shut down
left and right, only large, corporate restaurant
 chains can withstand the financial risks associated
 with feeding the population.



This, unfortunately, leads to the very reason
we talk about drug gangs.
 It boils down to simple economics.

When you drive up prices, you drive up profits,
 and higher profits are what turn certain
 neighborhoods of our cities into war zones.

 Hard drug addicts begin stealing to support
their habits. Simultaneously, the neighborhood
pot dealers get busted, and they are quickly
replaced with cartel-connected go-getters
from out of town.

These well-armed individuals introduce substances
which are far more dangerous than marijuana, and
 they occasionally have to battle each other over
 business disputes. And then we wonder why our culture
 is degrading, and politicians go through another
phase of "getting tough" on drugs.


Instead of tough, when are we going to get smart?

Demand for drugs has remained fairly constant over
the last 100 years, but today, our laws prevent
 physicians from properly treating addiction as
a medical problem.


There are many policy alternatives that should
 be discussed with regard to hard drugs, and we
should certainly be smart about the way we end
the prohibition of marijuana, but today what's
imperative is that we not only observe but truly
 comprehend the actual consequences of wasting
 tax dollars on efforts when the real solutions
lie in a fundamentally different approach.


Killing ants with a hammer only seems to make
 sense until you start noticing what you've done
 to the sidewalk.

Ron Paul On Medical Marijuana