| Photo: OregonLive.com |
| John Stossel: “It’s not the intoxicant that causes crime — it’s prohibition.” |
Host John Stossel will take a look at the effects of prohibition during part of his Fox Business Network show, Stossel, Thursday at 8 p.m. Eastern time.
“In part of my show tonight, I’ll talk about how laws against prostitution, organ selling, and drug use hurt more people than prostitution, organ selling, and drug use do,” Stossel wrote Thursday.
Stossel notes that the first argument against legalizing drugs is usually “Then more kids will abuse drugs!”
“But there’s little evidence for that,” Stossel points out. “The Netherlands has officially ‘tolerated’ marijuana for 30 years. So is there violent marijuana crime? No. Fewer young people in Holland smoke marijuana than do Americans. Legalization took the mystique away. A Dutch minister of health said, ‘We’ve succeeded in making pot… boring.’ “
The drug warriors at the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) would have us believe that legalizing drugs wouldn’t reduce organized crime:
After Prohibition ended, did the organized crime in our country go down? No. It continues today in a variety of other criminal enterprises. Legalization would not put the cartels out of business; cartels would simply look to other illegal endeavors.
But, as Stossel points out, a quick look at the murder rate tells us otherwise. The red part of the line shows when alcohol was banned; note the effect of prohibition and re-legalization. Obviously, organized crime did go down once Prohibition ended.
“Because it’s not the intoxicant that causes crime — it’s prohibition,” Stossel writes. “That’s why we have Colombian drug gangs, but no French wine cartels or American Budweiser gangs.”