Should we legalize all drugs?

Drug-related crime would increase if drugs were legal

Question: Should we legalize all drugs?
Position‹2 of 3›: No, we should not legalize all drugs
Argument1 of 3›: Drug-related crime would increase if drugs were legal

More people using drugs means more people engaging in the dangerous behaviours associated with drug use.

The argument

Drug users commit both violent and non-violent crimes at a much higher rate than the general population. The detrimental effects of drug use on the user's mental state and decision-making can encourage people to engage in violent or risky behaviours due to increased aggression, lowered inhibitions and motor skills, and even psychotic episodes. The intense cravings for drugs experienced by addicts also motivate stealing and other criminal activities in order to fund drug purchases. Legalizing drugs would mean more people would be using drugs, and would thus cause a higher rate of all of the harmful, criminal acts associated with drug use.

Premises

[P1]Drug users commit violent and non-violent crimes at a much higher rate, as drug use lowers inhibitions and impairs decision-making, while intense cravings drive stealing to fund purchases. [P2] Legalizing drugs would mean more people using drugs and therefore a higher rate of the harmful, criminal acts associated with drug use. [C] Therefore, because drug-related crime would increase, we should not legalize all drugs.

Counter-arguments

This argument treats the crime that surrounds drugs as a property of the drugs themselves, when much of it is a product of prohibition. Acquisitive crime is driven by price: illegal markets carry a risk premium that pushes the cost of a dependency far above what a regulated supply would cost, and it is that inflated price — not the pharmacology — that makes theft a means of funding use. The violent crime associated with the trade, meanwhile, belongs almost entirely to the illicit market itself, where disputes cannot be settled by contract or courts and are settled by force instead. Removing that market removes the violence attached to it. The inference from legalisation to greater use is also asserted rather than demonstrated. Critics of this argument point out that availability is only one determinant of consumption, and that jurisdictions which have relaxed criminal penalties have not seen the surges predicted. Nor does the correlation between heavy drug use and offending establish the direction of causation: poverty, untreated illness and a criminal record that closes off legal work all raise both. Finally, the argument proves too much — alcohol is legal, is associated with a large share of violent offending, and its prohibition produced precisely the organised criminality this argument fears.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The crimes cited are largely artefacts of prohibition rather than of drug use: illegal pricing drives acquisitive offending, and the violence belongs to an unregulated market that cannot use courts to settle disputes. [Rejecting P2] That legalisation would substantially increase use is asserted, not shown, and criminal penalties are only one influence on consumption; alcohol's history suggests prohibition itself generates the organised criminality being warned against.

Proponents cited

Theodore Dalrymple
“...there are reasons to doubt whether the crime rate would fall quite as dramatically as advocates of legalization have suggested. Amsterdam, where access to drugs is relatively unproblematic, is among the most violent and squalid cities in Europe. The idea behind crime—of getting rich, or at least richer, quickly and without much effort—is unlikely to disappear once drugs are freely available to all who want them.”
John C. Lawn
“There should be a grave concern about the effect legalization of drugs would have on crime in this country. Legalization of drugs would not eliminate or decrease drug-related crime. A popular misconception is that drug users commit crimes solely to support expensive drug habits. This misconception leads to the false conclusion that lowering the cost of drugs would reduce the level of crime. In reality, cheaper, legal drugs would probably increase the level of violent crimes and crimes to property.”
Jason C. Johnson
“A review of the crime statistics cast doubt on proponents’ claim that legalization reduces violent crime; to the contrary, homicides have generally increased in pro-marijuana jurisdictions. [...] It turns out that legalization of marijuana doesn’t eliminate the illicit black market, but may actually increase competition among rival factions of black-market dealers.”
Institute for Behavior and Health
“Advocates of drug legalization believe that making high-quality drugs cheaply and widely available will eliminate the illegal drug market, regulate quality and price, and decrease law enforcement costs including arrest and incarceration. [...] But unless these “reforms” make all illegal drugs available to any willing buyer there will be a large and destructive illegal market in these addictive substances.”