[aianus]

I don't know, what did the low level bootleggers and enforcers do after prohibition ended? If I was one, I'd have moved on to similar work in narcotics and prostitution.

People choose to risk jail time and physical harm to make mediocre money as a street dealer because they have no better options. Most of them don't even have high school diplomas, what else are they going to do? If we don't do anything other than eliminate the black market for drugs their next best option is still going to be some sort of crime.

[joel_perl_prog]

Sure. But you assume there's a permanent class of criminals whose only interest is crime. The principle interest in the drug game is money. It's a business.

What I'm saying is, there's not a "fixed amount of crime," which you imply; you basically say it's like squeezing a balloon. The amount of air doesn't change, it just gets displaced a little bit.

What we need is a sociologist (or someone who has otherwise done the reading) to come in with studies and numbers. I'm sort of working outward from my reference, Pinker's The Better Angels Of Our Nature, and suggesting that crime, too, overall crime, is dropping. And would drop even more if the laws were written correctly. In other words, there's not a fixed number of criminals, nor a fixed amount of crime.

[dinkumthinkum]

You can talk about studies and all that and that's fine but I think this is horribly naive. The world is not a pop sociology book.

[joel_perl_prog]

That's exactly why it's so important to decriminalize (or outright legalize). Because the theory behind criminalization simply doesn't work. It is you who are naive, sir. Please see my other comments above. I explain this. I hope I explain this. What didn't I convey?

[dinkumthinkum]

Oh, no I'm not naive. You think some Pinker book shows that complete legalization would result in people involved in the drug becoming upstanding members of society. You talk of "criminals" as some kind of theoretical agent.

[joel_perl_prog]

I can see that were not going to connect here. And I shouldn't have called you naive. I should have said your position is naive.

But is it really such a stretch to expect alignment between swiftly declining rates of violence and declining rates of all anti-social behavior.

Keep in mind, doing drugs, just recreationally doing drugs, minding ones own business IS NOT A CRIME (or shouldn't be) and isn't anti-social (or doesn't have to be, and isn't for most casual users). Think: casual alcohol drinkers. As most are. Are there alcoholics? Of course. But that does nothing to diminish my case. It was never expected that all crime would vanish (or perhaps...you expect that?).

[dobbsbob]

Most gangs are not directly involved in the sale of narcotics, instead they are involved in extortion "taxing" those who are selling drugs in their area. If drugs disappear they will find another black market to tax like gambling, fencing stolen goods or selling weapons. However the difference is they won't make a million dollars per month taxing somebody running an illegal gambling operation unlike jacking cocaine drivers. It will be a much smaller criminal enterprise, they won't be able to afford a small army of thugs to terrorize an entire city like they currently do here now with all their windfall narco profits.

As for non violent street peddlers I imagine they will go into exports, shipping narcotics to countries where it's still illegal. After Marijuana was symbolically decriminalized by police here refusing to arrest people for possession, and the black market was swamped with declining prices, many former dealers and growers instead decided to operate unlicensed tourist operations selling weed travel packages, and running their own storefronts for legal drugs using their profits as street dealers to bootstrap it.

[joel_perl_prog]

Sure, but even if some number of drug dealers moved on to other crime, would there not necessarily be less crime, overall, if a major aspect of normal human life were to suddenly be decriminalized? In other words, when everything is a crime, we are all criminals. That's my basic position on the war on drugs, and so many other things.

Edit: whoops, meant to reply thecabinet.