Criminalization of drugs enables corruption on a massive scale. I do wonder how much the world would change if there were and end to drug prohibition.

Not only would states receive tax revenue from the sale of drugs, but

- drug users would not be poisoned by additives and substitutes like fentanyl

- there would be one less reason to corrupt the police, government officials, and the judiciary

- money laundering would basically end — I mean, what else do you need money laundering for? Heists?

The subtle yet pervasive negative effects of drug prohibition are things we have become so used to that we can scarce imagine the world without them.

I'm not disagreeing with you, but regarding money laundering, it's not like drug trafficking and heists are only illegal streams of money which needs to be cleaned. Trafficking, prostitution, illegal gambling, depositing of toxic waste, bribe money, cyber crime, financial malversations etc.

I would expect that proceeds from drugs constitute the vast majority of value that is laundered today, though. It would be interesting to consider the impact, for sure.

Yes, it would absolutely have a massive impact on money laundry as an industry (i.e. on tax havens etc).

$500B a year or so is the estimate.

I'm for legalisation of "most" drugs but I can't stop thinking that paying taxes would be the last thing most heroin users will have in mind.

We also have the recent opioids crisis. It didn't work out very well.

You must realise that there is also cost for everything including legalisation(i.e more people will get hooked on (hard) drugs).

> We also have the recent opioids crisis. It didn't work out very well.

The opioid crisis has been terrible, but it didn't happen as a result of drug laws becoming more lax. If anything, existing laws made the crisis much worse because people who became addicted to prescription opioids had no way to get a fix, so they were forced to purchase illegally off the street. If an American doctor knowingly gave an addict a prescription opioid for relief, they could be arrested as a "dealer".

The countries that have had the most success in fighting hard drug use, such as Portugal, did exactly the opposite of the punitive approach people in the U.S. consistently advocate for. Instead, they decriminalized drugs and put the resources from police enforcement and imprisonment into rehabilitation instead. Instead of arresting doctors, safe injection sites allowed for individuals to safely manage their habit while they work toward improving their lives.

If the U.S. spent even a fraction of its war on drugs budget on rehabilitation we would have far fewer addicts, not more. I don't think the "if it's legal, there will be more addicts" argument holds any water.

>> If the U.S. spent even a fraction of its war on drugs budget on rehabilitation we would have far fewer addicts, not more.

Rehabilitation and legalisation are distinctiv issues. When someone talks me about legalisation I think of cannabis-like legalisation where corporations make a profit not rehabilitation clinics like in Portugal.

If the gov wants to put the drug dealers out of business they could offer free shots for users as a free/affordable medical service. Along with campaigns and hard work the usage may even drop.

Sure but there's costs associated with criminalization too - you have to work out which is worse.

Ideally, all that saved money would be used to help addicts. But in practice, it would just be used on new tax cuts.

> legalisation

I don't think heroin will ever be legal as weed is legal in some states.

Decriminalised at the end user level ? maybe. Fully legalised and sold at walmart ? eh, I doubt it

Coincidentally there's active discussion on the topic of drug prohibition here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24533041

I also agree. I hate drug trafiking with a passion. Nations are utterly destroyed by the concept of illegal drugs. Legalize it to dry the swamp.

>Criminalization of drugs enables corruption on a massive scale. I do wonder how much the world would change if there were and end to drug prohibition.

Singapore have gone to the extreme other end and seems to be doing fine. It's not the prohibition, but the way it is enforced.

Singapore thrives by being a semi-democratic state. A benevolent strong man prevents rival parties from gaining a foothold by carefully tending to the needs of each of the major ethnic groups (Malays, Chinese, and South Indians). It’s not a true democracy, but it has to be the nicest non-democracy in the world.

Singapore is a highly educated tiny island and its parameters are different than pretty much every other country.

Most developed countries are now highly educated.

I don't want my country to have public beatings like Singapore

There are a lot of 'ifs' here. Especially iffy -- the tax windfall creates its own perverse incentives. Drug abuse is bad for you, no amount game theory or legal hair-splitting will change that.

As is smoking, drinking, fast food, sugar, and driving. And yet...

Yeah but fast food, sugar etc are light/very light drugs and there is work in progress to limit them(i.e the amount of sugar in snacks etc).

Sugar is not "lighter" than, for example, cocaine.

Sugar related health issues such as diabetes and obesity have far higher costs to society than cocaine abuse does.

I believe cocaine is more addictive than sugar. Cardiac arrest is another issue. Not much is known about long term health effects of cocaine because we don't have a majority of population snorting cocaine and eating and drinking it every single day.

you need to correct for per-user cost, i.e. cost per user of sugar vs per user of coke

Why not just legalize corruption? No corruption — no problems you mentioned above.

Would you rather abandon the rule of law entirely rather than admit prohibition was a massive mistake and/or not done in good faith? (Not directed at you specifically because I assume your comment was fecetious, just posing the question to clarify thoughts on the matter.)

From view point of a criminal, prosecution of crime is root of all evil.

> Not directed at you specifically because I assume your comment was fecetious

It's kind of argumentation used in discussions, where absurd claim is made first, and then both parties are walking together from absurd to clarity, step by step. Doesn't work on HN, because HN'ers are jumping around, instead of walking, and throwing random downvotes.

If I’m a “criminal” who sells weed, and my sister is raped and killed, I don’t think prosecution is the “root of all evil”. I’m not sure your point makes sense unless breaking one law makes you oppose all laws somehow.

I mean it’s illegal in many places to blaspheme against the local religion, let’s not pretend that all laws are just and all criminals are depraved immoral beings.

Prohibition is not about drug use, but control and power. So the answer is and always will be a resounding yes.

In USA it already is legalized. It's called lobbying.

Fun fact of the day: lobbying is legal and common across all of Europe. It's why the EU has such intense agriculture protectionism, the farmers act as an interest group that constantly lobbies on their own behalf. It's why Germany's domestic auto market has been specifically set up for decades to protect the domestic players against foreign competition. Go into Western Europe and try threatening Airbus, good luck, they'll lobby you right out of the EU unless you have a superpower backing you.

Lobbying does not mean corruption is legalized in the US.

In my observation, people that claim lobbying is legalized corruption in the US, don't know anything about the laws that surround lobbying, the limits, how it works, and how it doesn't work. It's primarily a popular Reddit-knowledge (aka low quality, easy to throw around, often wrong or incomplete) bumper sticker to post online. People routinely go to jail for violating the strict laws surrounding lobbying. You can't buy politicans and you can't buy legislation; trying that is a quick trip to prison.

Lobbying in the US is more lax than in most of Western Europe, that much is true. Althought the special interests in Europe are every bit as potent as those in the US. As a politician, just try going after farm subsidies in the EU, see what happens to you.

As is usually the case when it comes to fake Reddit-knowledge, the reality of lobbying in the US is far more nuanced and complicated. I understand people love their bumper stickers though, for artificial virtue signaling purposes ("Free Tibet").

You can hire a registered lobbyist and they can argue a position that you favor. That's most of what you can do. And nearly everything to do with lobbying in the US is public information due to hefty disclosure requirements.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobbying_in_the_United_States

Well, lobbying is not an instance of retail corruption, where everyone is on sale for some price. However, it (lobbying) is a form of network corruption--where individual acts don't appear corrupt. At a macro level, they appear corrupt. Anyway, network corruption can't be prosecuted.

Now that bribery is explicitly legal in the US, and lobbyists deliver the bribes, lobbying has become more or less synonymous with bribery, because who would pay any attention to a lobbyist without a bribe in hand?

> Criminalization of drugs enables corruption on a massive scale.

Criminalization of enter a noun enables corruption on a massive scale.

Criminalization of corruption enables corruption on a massive scale.

Criminalization of crime enables corruption on a massive scale.

:-/

Let's try. Criminalization of {rape, murder, theft} enables corruption on a massive scale. Doesn't seem to work methinks.

I was wondering how long it would take HN to propose a pedantic counter-point to that comment.

Thanks!

My example is that the original claim is substantially meaningless so why even post it.

you're welcome!

Yes, that's exactly what I said.

I'm afraid I must have misunderstood you. To describe my comment as pedantic perhaps inverted your intended meaning, or at least I got the wrong end of the stick. No offence intended anyway.

No, you understood correctly.

I said your comment was pedantic, and your response was basically confirming that you were indeed being pedantic.

pedantic: overly concerned with minute details or formalisms.

Obviously the original poster didn't _literally_ mean enter any noun at all, because that wouldn't work. Perhaps their choice of wording could have been better but the argument was pretty clear in the context of the discussion.

I think any reasonable person who was interested in participating in the actual discussion would understand their point, unless they were trying to be... _pedantic_ about it.

Enter your comment, where you cherry-pick 3 nouns - out of thousands of possible activities that could have worked just fine - so as to be able to proclaim "a-ha! you are incorrect, sir".. which ultimately brought nothing constructive to the conversation.

I hope that clarification helps!

A whole new level? This case? Is this better than that other case where there where convictions all over the world and in Greece instead the DA was indicted by the current government with the police escort removed and consequently the house broken into and Hard Disk stolen? I mean that case that also included lost witnesses such as the one who was trapped and burned in his Porsche Jeep and the other one who suffered the same fate with his BMW. His BMW motorbike! The country that has the governing party with the largest deficit per capita for any country in the world supported by media that survived by being forgiven huge deficits while other competing media perished? The same people had the secret services hunt a journalist by falsifying documents a case for which they were convicted a case only covered by the paper the reporter works for

This is the standard state of things. A cleptocracy being run by the same surnames throughout the years, this case simply got covered by a foreign media.