The reasons in support of the drug war are increasingly struggling to establish itself.

Today, about 53 percent of US citizens believe that the game-and the candle is not earned only 19 percent think the opposite.
Turning to my book Chasing The Scream: The first and last days of the war on drugs, I noticed that every state or nation that decides to change its approach and take a step back from the war on drugs, passes through three stages.
In a first phase the dominant emotions are confusing and anxiety; then the people see what it is in practice, and ends up being mostly favorable.
After the Colorado legalized marijuana and citizens have seen how it worked in practice-with taxes and regulations on the sale-support has risen, and now 58 percent of the population is in favor; only 38 percent want to return to Prohibition.
After that Portugal decriminalized all drugs in 2001 and transferred the money used to punish addicts to programs that bring an improvement in their lives, the use of injection drugs decreased by 50 percent.
Even the policeman who led the campaign of opposition to the decriminalization changed his mind, and said he hopes that the whole world to follow the example of Portugal.
After that Switzerland has started distribution of heroin to addicts over a decade ago, no one, literally no one has died of heroin overdose legal and crime has decreased dramatically.
That is why even the Swiss-conservatore- tend to mold electorate voted to maintain the system.
As in the US public debate has become more mainstream, it began to circulate a large amount of false information and hoaxes.
It is natural, it is a complex subject and able to polarize.
But the fears of many are absolutely unfounded.
And there are three concepts that help to allay some of their concerns about drug legalization.
NUMBER ONE CONCEPT: THE RISK PREMIUM
The worst aspect of this war I think is violence caused by prohibition: it is exactly the way the alcohol prohibition created Al Capone.
When a substance is illegal, whoever trafficking is forced to resort to violence to protect their loot.
As I wrote here, imagine you run a liquor store.
If someone steals a bottle of vodka and managed to stop it, you can call the police-so you do not have to be violent.
But if you sell cannabis or crack, and someone tries to rob you, you can not appeal to the law.
And at the same time you have to make sure that nobody wants to ever try again.
The drug war wing, as he said Charles Bowden, creates a war on drugs, fought with blood and fire weapons.
But many contend arguing that legalization, in fact, would not bring drug dealers to bankruptcy and they would continue to do exactly as before.
The British Conservative commentator Simon Heffer argued that legalization would still enable the existence of a black market because the legal drugs would be more expensive.
And Deborah Orr in an article in the Guardian explains that crime will "always be able to sell at a lower price than it can and must do a taxed and regulated market."
Many think so.
But both arguments are based on the inability to understand the "risk premium."
The best way to explain this is with an example: imagine that I ask you to carry around a bottle of rum to be delivered to my aunt for her birthday.
Now imagine that you're asking to bring her a bag of grass or a bag of cocaine.
You could easily say no.
And if accepted it, would you want greater compensation.
This difference is "risk premium" call, and when the drug is illegal applies to every point of the chain.
The farmer cultivating cannabis, opium or coca in Colombia or Afghanistan or Morocco-should be paid more for the risk you run.
The guy who then becomes the laboratory should be paid more.
The people who carry it through the usual boundaries a chain-people-need to be paid more.
And the guys who then sell it to you need to be paid more for the risk.
At each step, the risk brings the price to rise.
If you legalize, and the market is turning into a legitimate activity, there would be no risk premium to be paid.
The people involved would run no greater risk than one that sells potatoes or copies of the Bible.
And once this factor is eliminated, the legal product will be much cheaper.
Among the points made by Simon Heffer and Deborah Orr he will then miss another.
With the legalization is good not to excessively lower the price, because this maneuver may facilitate its use: a lower price means that more people can have access.
That hole is filled with taxes, just as happened in Colorado.
That's how you avoid the collapse of prices while proceeding to the weakening of organized crime.
CONCEPT NUMBER TWO: PROHIBITION AND CRIME
Many argue that if you interrupt the war on drugs, the crime would go simply to other forms of crime-that is trafficking in human beings, prostitution, kidnapping and so on.
There are two arguments that can help us to think differently about it.
The late twenties and early thirties in the United States are remembered as the years of the seizure of gold.
Everyone remembers the kidnapping of the son of Charles Lindbergh, but it had been one case among many.
Because suddenly he was recorded quell'impennata in kidnapping?
In an attempt to answer this, it may be useful to remember that in Colombia the same surge was recorded in the late eighties and early nineties.
And today, the north of Mexico is the place with the highest number of kidnappings in the world.
Imagine you decide to kidnap the son of a wealthy person and keep him in custody for a ransom.
We must organize to right, and study the habits of the victim to understand the place in which can be sequestered.
A driver .. A place to keep the baby, a place where no one can hear him.
You will need a group of people who take it in turns to control the victim.
It needs a detailed plan for the money and where to request them delivered.
The kidnapping is therefore a business that requires an initial investment.
Somewhere you still get that money.
The banks do not offer loans for people's kidnappers.
You must contact with other criminals.
There, now we can get an idea of why, in the United States, quell'impennata in kidnapping has been registered at the time of the peak of alcohol prohibition, and in Colombia and Mexico in what the Drug Prohibition
When prohibiting a very common substance-such as alcohol, cannabis, or cocaine-this does not disappear into thin air.
From the legal markets passes into the hands of criminals.
Suddenly, these criminals have a lot more money than before.
What do they do with that money?
Some if them as pocket-profits and, as good businessmen, invest what remains in other activities.
The prohibition, in fact, creates a large investment bank for the crime.
And criminals use these funds to expand the crime to other spheres.
Some people faced the question we will respond, "Some people are inherently criminal.
If you can not commit a crime, they commit another: it is in their nature. "
There is a certain part of the population that is inherently criminal, and all we can do is catch it.
You can call it "the quantity theory of the crime."
So, once you legalize, criminals will simply move to another area.
But there's another way to think about the crime.
It is based on the idea that criminals are motivated by incentives, just as it happens to all of us.
If I ask you to smuggle in Mexico a marijuana bag or cocaine as a personal favor, most likely refuse.
But if I offer you a million dollars, you could us a little thought.
Let's say you offer a billion dollars.
Apparently we can test.
There is a whole area of sociology called "economy of crime," and we can use it.
Criminals, in fact, are human and, in fact, respond to incentives.
It is the reason why when unemployment rises, usually rises even crime among youth: crime acquires economic attractiveness when there are fewer alternatives.
It's why when wages go down to the low level of employment, the salt crime: crime helps you earn more.
And so on: there's a long list of evidence collected in a study by the London School of Economics.
The evidence that crime is influenced by the incentives are overwhelming.
So if you delete the control of one of the largest industries in the world-with a profit margin of 300 percent from production to sale-you eliminate a large part of the incentives that lead to lawlessness.
People celebrating a crime, it does not for some criminal essence buried in your bone marrow, it is because they want a bit 'of money and the excitement that comes from dealing with a prohibited market.
Of course, some criminals will try to focus on other types of crime.
We think the crime most commonly associated with drug-dealing: prostitution.
Following the legalization of drugs there will be more people who want to pay for sex than the previous week.
that market already has its (base) group of criminals who controls it.
And with no increase in demand, there will be a big increase in incentives, so there will be a big increase in people coming into that market.
In Switzerland, the distribution of doses to people already addicted to drugs, there has been an increase in prostitution.
In fact, as I discovered when I interviewed people on the ground, the opposite has happened.
At addicted prostitutes were given heroin and legal support to change their lives, and for that prostitution is never returned to the levels it was at before.
Obviously there are a lot of things we do not know booby end of the drug war.
To paraphrase what he said Obama when he was running for the White House on the war in Iraq, we have to be so careful to get out of it what we were inattentive to enter.
But there are a lot of things we know, by the experiment of alcohol prohibition, the experiments on the end of prohibition of drugs around the world, from Uruguay to Washington to Switzerland.
But the most important thing I've learned, and that led to all the others, is this: in the end the drug war we should not be driven by fear, but by cold and practical numbers.
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