BrianGarst.com

New York Police Commissioner William Bratton is confused by the fact that more and more states and their voters are embracing liberty minded drug policies.

In a radio interview yesterday, New York Police Commissioner William Bratton said violence associated with marijuana trafficking in his city should give pause to advocates of legalization. “In New York City,” Bratton told AM 970 host John Catsimatidis, “most of the violence we see around drug trafficking is involving marijuana, and I have to scratch my head as we are seeing many states wanting to legalize marijuana.”

I suppose his confusion is understandable given his apparent ignorance of the consequences of prohibition. What these other states know and Commissioner Bratton does not is that prohibition does not eliminate the market for a good, but rather drives it underground in the black market where crime is more likely to occur.

The negative effects of prohibition are not a secret. It is well understood, for instance, that the production and sale of alcohol is not an inherently violent trade, despite its close relationship with organized crime during Prohibition. This occurred for a multitude of reasons. Prohibition significantly increases the costs of a good, which creates a strong profit motive. But because entering the market requires breaking the law, only those comfortable with doing so move to capture those profits. And if they don’t mind breaking the law to make and sell a product, they’re less likely to care about breaking it to fight, often with violence, their competitors.

Prohibition also increases health risks for users. Product quality declines on the black market, where information on who produces what and how are necessarily hidden from consumers, and torts are not available to hold producers liable for subpar product. The Iron Law of Prohibition also states that, for reasons of economic efficiency, product potency increases in concert with the level of enforcement. Put another way, “the harder the enforcement, the harder the drugs.”

All of this is to say that what Commissioner Bratton sees are the products of prohibition itself, not justifications for it. Sadly, he is also providing a demonstration of how bad government tends to beget more bad government.