Prohibition laws, though popular, has not worked before and won’t work today, whether applied to alcohol, prostitution, drugs and etc, for the simple reason that demand and supply can’t be wished away by fiat.
Worst, applying prohibition signifies as the proverbial cure that is worst than the disease.
Apparently Guatemala’s President, Otto Pérez Molina, seems to see the light.
From Cato’s Juan Carlos Hidalgo, (bold emphasis mine)
It was going to happen sooner rather than later. Three years ago, a trio of former Latin American presidents denounced drug prohibition and called to “break the taboo” of discussing policy alternatives such as drug decriminalization. Then, a few months later, we had a former Mexican president calling for outright legalization. Late last year, a sitting Colombian president said that he would favor drug legalization “if the rest of the world does it too.” This weekend,a sitting Guatemalan president said he will propose drug legalization for Central America in an upcoming regional summit.
Otto Pérez Molina thus becomes the first sitting head of state to propose ending the war on drugs. Being a conservative former general who ran on a platform of fighting crime with “an iron fist,” Pérez Molina is an unlikely champion of sensible drug policy reform. As he described it, under his proposal “It wouldn’t be a crime to transport, to move drugs. It would all have to be regulated.” Pérez Molina says that with legalization, “you would get rid of money-laundering, smuggling, arms trafficking and the corruption that has crippled judges, police forces and entire government institutions, not only in our country but in the region.”
Central America is one of the hottest battlegrounds in Washington’s hemispheric war on drugs. Guatemala, along with neighboring Honduras, El Salvador and Belize, are among the most violent countries in the world. Most of the violence stems from turf wars between juvenile gangs, but Mexican drug cartels are increasingly escalating it as they extend their influence and operations in the region.
As Pérez Molina said, Central America’s biggest liability in its fight against organized crime is its institutional weakness. Judges, policemen, politicians, and soldiers are easily corrupted by cartels. Despite increasing their security budgets by 60% in the last five years, Central American countries spent approximately $4 billion in 2010 on security and justice. This amount dwarfs with the estimated $25-35 billion that Mexican cartels—who run the drug business in Central America—pocket every year.
Institutional corruption has been a major unintended effect from the war on drugs.
As economist Mark Thornton explains,
In general, however, prohibition results in more, not less, crime and corruption. The black markets that result from prohibitions represent institutionalized criminal exchanges. These criminal exchanges, or victimless crimes, often involve violent criminal acts. Prohibitions have also been associated with organized crime and gangs. Violence is used in black markets and criminal organizations to enforce contracts, maintain market share, and defend sales territory.
The crime and violence that occurred during the late 1920s and early 1930s was a major reason for the repeal of Prohibition (Kyvig 1979, 123, 167). The nondrug criminal activity of heroin addicts has been associated with the economic effects of prohibition laws and is viewed by Erickson (1969) and others as a major cost of heroin prohibition.
Corruption of law-enforcement officers and other public officials is also a familiar manifestation of prohibited markets. Experience with prohibition has shown it to be a major corrupting influence. The corruption of the Prohibition Bureau proved to be a major stumbling block to the effective enforcement of Prohibition and was also cited as a reason for repeal. Most important, this corruption penetrates beyond the enforcement bureaucracy to government in general.
Recent experience has shown that worldwide multidrug prohibition is a major corrupting force in several national governments, such as Colombia and Mexico.
Corruption is a natural side-effect from interventionism.
Yet there are three ways to deal with the drug menace: prohibition, education and rehabilitation-therapy.
Since prohibition predominantly fails, then the next two options would provide for better alternatives: focus on education and rehabilitation.
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