Prohibition hands the whole supply to criminals and makes every dose an unknown

The argument

Supporters of legalisation argue that prohibition does not remove a drug market but assigns it to people operating outside the law. Because the trade is illegal, nothing about it can be regulated. There is no requirement that a product state its contents, no limit on concentration, no recall when a batch injures people, and no recourse for a buyer sold something other than what was agreed. Users therefore consume substances of unknown strength and composition, and supporters argue that a large part of the harm attributed to drugs follows from that uncertainty rather than from the substances themselves: a dose that is survivable at one concentration is lethal at another, and the buyer cannot tell which they hold. The same reasoning extends to the violence surrounding the trade. A market whose participants cannot use courts, contracts or the police settles its disputes by force, and control of routes and territory becomes worth fighting over precisely because the trade is lucrative and cannot be policed from within. Supporters argue that the revenues sustaining armed groups and trafficking networks are a product of the price premium prohibition creates, and would largely disappear alongside it. Legalisation, on this account, moves the trade into the framework that already governs comparable risks: licensed sellers, products of stated strength and contents, age restrictions, limits on advertising, taxation, and an obligation on a seller to refuse a sale to someone evidently in difficulty. None of these instruments is available while the market is illegal, and supporters argue that gaining them is the main benefit to be had.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Opponents reply that a legal market would solve the adulteration problem by creating a larger one, since a supply that is cheaper, safer and easier to obtain would be used by far more people, and the aggregate harm of widespread use could exceed the harm of an unsafe supply used by fewer. They add that regulation has not stopped the alcohol and tobacco industries from drawing most of their revenue from their heaviest users and marketing accordingly, and that there is no reason to expect a legal drug industry to behave differently.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] That a prohibited market cannot be regulated is true by definition and understates what prohibition does, since enforcement also raises price and restricts access. The premise treats the absence of regulation as though it were the only effect of illegality. [Rejecting P2] The claim that much of the harm follows from uncertainty of supply rather than from the substances is the crux of the argument and is asserted. Dependence, impairment and chronic damage are attributed to the substances themselves, and the premise never says what share of the harm it is claiming for adulteration. [Rejecting P3] That the price premium funds armed groups is granted, and the inference needs those revenues to disappear rather than relocate. Organisations built on a prohibited trade have moved into other prohibited markets where one was legalised, which the premise does not address.