http://cafehayek.com/2015/02/quotation-of-the-day-1277.html
Quotation of the Day…
by DON BOUDREAUX on FEBRUARY 28, 2015
in DINNER TABLE ECONOMICS, NANNY STATE, SEEN AND UNSEEN
*** begin quote ***
… is from page 16 of Jeffrey Miron’s excellent 2004 monograph, Drug War Crimes:
Under legalization, the incidence of accidental poisonings or overdoses would not be zero, just as it is not zero for currently legal goods such as alcohol. But the rate of such incidents would decline significantly, since consumers would know the potency of the drugs they consume and have far greater confidence that the drugs contained the desired ingredients rather than unknown contaminants.
*** end quote ***
What is imho the biggest Unintended Consequence of the “(pseudo) War on (some) Drugs” is that “children” die.
Yeah, I know they are sort of “young adults”, but in so many ways they are like “children”.
They have been denied the “experiences of life” by our over-protective infantilization of their “life’s non-experiences”.
Think about what life was like for the American “youth” from the Dead Old White Guys to say 1980’s.
Life was tough. Hard work. Discipline — either self or externally imposed. Dirty work for any wages was valued.
Now think about since then — undereducated in Gooferment Skrules where feelings count more than results. Virtually unlimited food for just being there. Entertainment to the exclusion of any “earnings”.
So why are we surprised when they die of overdoses and “rat poison” in “kool illegal drugs”?
Ending the war on drug, just as when (Alcohol) Prohibition ended, makes what was “illegal and kool” not so much any more.
Going to buy your “drugs” at Walmart, Walgreens, or RiteAid does quite feel the same. It’s equivalent to in the 50’s going to a strange drug store where no one knew you to buy condoms. (Not that I ever had to do that.)
But think about “safety”. Do you think that your local Walmart pharmacy will give you “hot shots” or a drug cut with strychnine?
And imagine that it would come with a “health safety warning” that list where you can go for free help to get clean?
And, imaging that it will cost about as much as aspirin. You can have a “habit” and keep a job, just like the pre-drug war days.
Of course, it does bring about the unemployment question — drug lords, drug gangs, police, prison guards, politicians, and bureaucrats will all have to find new lines of work.
But what’s wrong with that?
Argh!
# – # – # – # – #
Reinke Faces Life 
The Antidruggers will take any hint of deaths from legalized drugs and count them as murders by the legislators — completely ignoring of course all the lives saved. The same sort of game is being played out in the smoking arena. Very sadly a couple of months ago a toddler somehow got hold of some unusually concentrated nicotine liquid that someone was going to dilute for use in an e-cig. The radical branch of the US antismoking movement has been ranting bloody murder for the last few years about e-cigs and, as usual, took advantage of the “Save The Children” moment to parlay the child’s death into political capital in an effort to regulate e-cigs into nonexistence.
As usual, I figured there might be another side to the story, so I did a bit of research. E-cigs have been floating around to some extent for roughly ten years (although they didn’t really “take off” until around 2010). There has now been one death from poisoning.
Meanwhile, there have been over 70,000 child deaths due to aspirin poisonings.
So which one needs to be banned? Why, the e-cig of course! After all… it LOOKS like smoking!
:/
Michael J. McFadden
Peace Studies, 1973
LikeLike