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More people die every year as a result of the war against drugs than die from what we call, generically, overdosing. These fatalities include, perhaps most prominently, drug merchants who compete for commercial territory, but include also people who are robbed and killed by those desperate for money to buy the drug to which they have become addicted.
This is perhaps the moment to note that the pharmaceutical cost of cocaine and heroin is approximately 2 per cent of the street price of those drugs. Since a cocaine addict can spend as much as $1,000 per week to sustain his habit, he would need to come up with that $1,000. The approximate fencing cost of stolen goods is 80 per cent, so that to come up with $1,000 can require stealing $5,000 worth of jewels, cars, whatever. We can see that at free-market rates, $20 per week would provide the addict with the cocaine which, in this wartime drug situation, requires of him $1,000.

 

William F. Buckley

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A Justice Department survey reports that 70 percent of those arrested for serious crimes are drug uses, which may mean that "drugs cause crime." A more sophisticated analysis suggests that the high cost of drugs, a result of their prohibition, forces drug users to turn crime to support an unnecessarily expensive habit.
Drug prohibition, by giving young people the thrill of breaking the law and giving pushers a strong incentive to find new customers, may actually increase the number of drug users. Moreover, out policy of pressuring friendly governments to wipe out drug cultivation has undermined many of those regimes and provoked resentment against us among their citizens and government officials.
We can either escalate the war on drugs, which would have dire implications for civil liberties and the right to privacy, or find a way to gracefully withdraw. Withdrawal should not be viewed as an endorsement of drug use; it would simply be an acknowledgment that the cost of this war- billions of dollars, runaway crime rates and restrictions on our personal freedom — is too high.

 

David Boaz

 

Repealing drug laws would remove the risks involved with producing and distributing drugs, bringing 'street prices' crashing down (it's estimated that a 'spoon' of heroin would cost about a quarter in the free market), thereby eradicating any incentive that criminals might have to compete with legitimate businesses, and greatly reducing — if not eliminating altogether — any economic reason to 'push' drugs on children.

 

L. Neil Smith

 

Under the market system, there is demand for a product if a lot of people want it - but that demand counts for nothing if those people have no money. If they lack money, their demand essentially doesn't exist...This explains why the drug industry is not investing money to develop a cure for a disease known as sleeping sickness, which leaves its victims in a coma. The disease...killed 66,000 people last year and threatens to infect 60 million more - but the only people who are afflicted by it are poverty-stricken Africans with no clout in the marketplace. Interestingly, there is a drug called eflornithine that is effective in lifting victims out of their comas. But drug companies stopped producing eflornithine in 1995 because it was no longer profitable to continue. The drug was still desperately needed, but only by people without money. So, following modern market practices, these people were simply left in a coma.

 

Linda McQuaig

 

They call it freebasing. It's not free, it costs you your house! It should be called homebasing! Three signs you're addicted to cocaine: First of all, if you come home to your house and you have no furniture and your cat's going "I'm outta here, prick!," Warning! Number two: If you have this dream where you're doing cocaine in your sleep and you can't fall asleep, and you wake up and you're doing cocaine, BINGO! Number three: if on your tax form it says, "$50,000 for snacks," MAYDAY!

 

Robin Williams