We don’t have crack houses all over the place anymore because we took the people who ran the crack houses and we put them in prison for so long that not only would the crack crisis have passed before they got out of prison, but everyone else was forced to stand up and take note of their sentence. Economics is economics. If you are actually going to attempt to ban a substance that has high demand, you must make the risk/reward calculus obvious and simple. The risk of apprehension multiplied by the likely punishment must exceed in value by orders of magnitude the anticipated reward in light of the alternative opportunities. And in order to make that message heard by all, a multiplication factor must be applied.
Basically, the punishment for selling drugs needs to seem unfair, draconian, and very scary to those likely to deal drugs. It must be sufficient to cause them to forego easy money and choose a life either of legal hard work or, as is the sad reality of our nation, government-funded dependency. In the United States, we did that once, and we won the crack epidemic with a combination of punishment and economic opportunity.
In contrast, today federal lawmakers bicker over palace intrigue and leave the barn doors open while Mexico and China flood our streets with dirt-cheap poison.
This guy makes a lot of good points. However, there is such a thing as compassion fatigue, and it's certainly applicable in this case. If these people want to shove poison into their bodies, and resist all attempts to help them get clean, they they need to be allowed to die.
Risk/Reward works for more than just a prison sentence. Strip any and all government benefits from people who are on drugs. "OH BUT WHAT IF THEY HAVE KIDS?" Take the kids away as well. Let them overdose and then Let. Them. Die.
There's your risk/reward right there. Sure, you could get high. And you could die in the gutter of an OD while people who don't do extremely stupid shit walk around your twitching corpse.
A person can only get clean if they want to get clean. When I quit smoking cigarettes, nothing worked to help me quit until I wanted to quit. Until an addict makes the choice to get clean, they will not get clean no matter what you do. And unless you're willing to institutionalize those people, then they will be getting high whenever and where ever they can do so, including your city parks where they leave their used needles behind for kids to step on.
You get more of what you subsidize. Stop subsidizing drug addiction. Stop paying people who just turn around and buy dope with your money. Remove all benefits from drug addicts. Take away the safety net for people who destroy society in their quest to get high.
Is that cruel? No, funding a drug addict who destroys the life of everyone around them is cruel. Prolonging a child's abuse by a drug addicted parent is cruel. Forcing Joe Taxpayer to fund the drug addict who's shitting in his driveway and leaving trash and used syringes in his yard is cruel.
The real victims here are the people who are forced to deal with rampant homelessness and addiction, and who have to clean up the mess left behind. It's the addicts who are the criminals, victimizing everyone else who has to deal with them.
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