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In my recent televised debate with the UK's Deirdre Boyd, the question came up of whether people involved in the illegal drug trade now would continue to operate -- as drug dealers or other criminals -- following legalization. I argued (video #3) that with all the money that currently goes into the criminal underground through the drug trade not being spent by people in that way anymore, there will be fewer jobs in crime. Illegal drug sellers won't be able to drop their prices enough to compete with the safe and inexpensive alternatives that legalization and regulation will provide for -- a certain level of profitability is needed to make it worth taking the substantial risk involved in being a criminal -- so they would no longer have customers. (Boyd argued that they would turn to "people trafficking," and there was no more time left in the segment, so I didn't get to respond that drug traffickers are investing their money in all kinds of places now, some of them probably illegal and abusive, so the last thing we should want is for them to continue to make even more money from drugs that they'll continue to invest in other places.) A post today in Small Business Trends reports on a study by economist Rob Fairlie which found a statistical relationship between being a teenage drug dealer and being self-employed as an adult. Fairlie accounted for factors like people having less formal education, or having criminal records that would tend to hinder them becoming other people's employees, and found that they didn't explain it. His conclusion is that entrepreneurs in both legal and illegal enterprises have some of the same characteristics. Matt Bandyk has an insightful follow-up on the US News & World Report entrepreneurship blog Risky Business, where he gets to the heart of the matter at hand:

Does drug prohibition change the incentives such that potential entrepreneurs pursue lives of crime rather than legitimate businesses?

My follow-up is to ask the related question: Do the violence and disorder of the illegal drug trade, which exists because of drug prohibition, drive away legitimate businesses that could provide quality job opportunities with the possibility of advancement for bright young people growing up in troubled neighborhoods who want to do something interesting? This is how I see it:

prohibition + continued drug use -> inner city drug crime and opportunity to work in crime crime -> less business investment -> fewer jobs -> difficulty finding work -> poverty crime -> arrests -> criminal records -> difficulty finding work -> poverty poverty -> crime, substance abuse, etc. arrests -> incarceration -> broken family & community relationships, training in crime opportunity to work in crime & training in crime -> people working in crime -> arrests, etc., and on and on and on...

So yes, I'd say that prohibition creates the wrong incentives -- maybe all the wrong incentives.

This 20/20 report on the death of Rachel Hoffman illustrates perfectly the greed and incompetence that too often characterizes modern drug war policing. Even if you already know the story, I can't recommend highly enough that you watch this and share it with everyone you know.

From the moment Tallahassee police laid their hands on her, to the day she died, to the disgraceful press conference in which they blamed her for her own death, there was not one moment throughout this shameful episode that can be excused. I can think of at least a half dozen laws that should be changed immediately in the aftermath of this and a few police officers that should be thrown out of the department and mauled in civil court.

But the one thing you won’t hear on 20/20 is that policing this bad doesn’t happen by accident. It wasn't bad training or a series of tragic coincidences that produced this outcome. It is the war on drugs, corrupt to its core, that incentivizes police to behave with a reckless disregard for the safety and well-being of the people they serve. Every action they took made sense to them. That's the problem.

As the meeting was posted for RSVP by the 21st and I didn't find out about it till the 25th I thought I'd have to drop in.I had the 26th in my head and wound up doing a walking tour of the DTES on Sa

A bold new anti-drug campaign has emerged in Lima, OH, the site of a shocking drug raid gone wrong in which the SWAT team killed Tarika Wilson -- an unarmed mother of six -- and shot her baby:

For about four hours, Jesse Lowe stood silently by himself holding a cardboard sign with three words scrawled in black marker: "Drugs Bring Death."

His message wasn't aimed just at the dealers or residents of the neighborhood scarred by shootings and fear. He wanted the city to hear him.

In the months since, Lowe's solitary protest has drawn together black and white, rich and poor in a city simmering with anger since a white police officer shot and killed a black woman and wounded her baby during a drug raid. The officer faces trial Monday on negligent homicide and negligent assault charges.

Upwards of 100 people have shown up at many of the nine rallies he's put together, waving "Drugs Bring Death" signs. They've handed out thousands of stickers, T-shirts and signs that now blanket the city midway between Toledo and Dayton. A billboard company donated space on four signs, and businesses have supplied food for the rallies.

"The courage of one man is spreading to everyone," said police Maj. Kevin Martin. "This is what the solution has to be. As police, we're limited in what we can do." [AP]

This is the same department that posted an image on its website that was threatening to the public and even positioned snipers over a peaceful public protest against their own violent tactics.

Of course, it should come as no surprise that in a town plagued by aggressive drug war policing, law enforcement would rally around a man who blames drugs and not the drug war for the suffering that surrounds him. Yet it was police who killed Tarika Wilson and who've kept their mouths clamped shut as the community cried out for answers. Across the nation, police are killing innocent people through needlessly confrontational paramilitary drug raids. It's a disturbing trend that will surely grow worse if we continue to blame drugs themselves for the preventable consequences of overzealous narcotics enforcement. Just look at the effect Lowe's campaign is already having:

"I don't know what caused Jesse to go out there, but thank God," said Bob Horton, a minister. He listens to a police radio scanner at home and has noticed a change in the neighborhood.

"People are calling in more when they see something," he said. "They didn't use to do that."

Unfortunately, the more calls police receive about suspected drug activity, the more mistakes will be made and the more innocent people will be killed. That is just the inevitable consequence of declaring war within our own communities. You get just exactly what you ask for, except, of course, any lasting peace and security.

So while I don't fault Jesse Lowe at all for spreading the message his challenging life has taught him, it's frustrating to see the discussion of drug abuse boiled down to such a simple soundbite. It is precisely the "Drugs Bring Death" mentality that fosters tolerance for the excessive drug war violence carried out by our own public servants. It is that sense of morbid inevitability that prevents too many of us from envisioning an answer beyond the endless war taking place in our own streets.

As long as the drug war continues, there will be no control, no security and no solution. If communities can muster the bravery to stand up to the dealers on their block, let's hope they'll someday join us in challenging the laws that created those enemies and recognize at long last that drugs are only as dangerous as we allow them to be.