Thoughts on the Us Drugs Policy

THOUGHTS ON THE US DRUGS POLICY

美国大麻政策浅谈

NAME: Xinging Wei (韦兴宁)

Southwest Jiaotong University（西南交通大学，四川，成都 610031）

ABSTRACT

The Economics of Public Issues, Roger Leroy Miller, Daniel K. Benjamin and Douglass C. North discuss the unintended and often harmful consequences of prohibiting voluntary exchange. Laws passed in congress made it illegal to trade drugs and the government applied policies to restrict the trade of drugs. But the trade of drugs does exist and it is a voluntary exchange. The underground trade amount is still huge. Economics can help elucidate the best way to analyze the supply and demand of drug market and therefore produce a effective way to control the drug exchange.

POLICY BACKGROUND

“The war on drug” has been started since 1914 in the United States. Drugs became illegal item since that. The government made very strict enforcement to the supply side. “In 2008, 1.5 million Americans were arrested for drug offenses. 500,000 were imprisoned.” [1] At the same time, it costs huge amount of money every year in the U.S. because of both the abuse of drugs and the enforcement to drug market. The U.S. federal government spent over $15 billion in 2010 on the War on Drugs, a rate of about $500 per second.[2] Strict policies and laws were applied and passed against drug market.

The government has been trying to prohibit drug abuse but both the enforcement and money policies turned out to be not working that well as the drug trade amount and abuse population is still huge. Sometime the government gets an opposite result to their purpose. The Prohibition makes it impossible to for the government to manage it the like other market. Therefore the quality of the drugs cannot be guaranteed too. The government has to face the question: “is it possible for laws restricting dangerous or destructive activity to be “too” strict? In other words, is making drugs illegal the best way to control the drug mark?”

ECONOMIC PRINCIPLES...