Uh... the fact that very very few people commit property crimes to buy a $5 six-pack?
If cigarettes were made illegal tomorrow, I doubt you'd see people who were purchasing black market cigarettes raping women and throwing them out windows because they were under the influence of tobacco. It's a nice effort, but your comparison is not valid.
I wasn't talking about crimes committed under the influence, I was talking about crimes committed to get funds to purchase. And if cigarettes were made illegal tomorrow, I guarantee you'd see a jump in property crimes as desperate addicts tried to afford the suddenly much more expensive price of their addictions.
As for the "raping women and throwing them out windows" crap, you've got a vastly overinflated idea of the power of drugs... and you're committing a very basic fallacy in that you're assuming that rare abuses justify prohibition. Hey, people use cars to escape from crimes... let's ban cars! After all, if criminals couldn't use getaway cars, there'd be fewer crimes, wouldn't there? Who cares about the tremendous societal costs such a ban on motor vehicles would impose?
The pharmaceutical cost of heroin is about $0.02 per dose.
Do you honestly think it would sell for anywhere near that?
Heck no. It'd sell at the price determined by the free market... you know, supply, demand, competition, all that sort of thing. Do you honestly think that the free market price wouldn't be much, much lower than the black market price? Do you honestly think that black markets don't result in tremendously overinflated prices, especially when billions of dollars are spent on enforcement?
You honestly think they faded away when prohibition ended?
I honestly think that Prohibition-related crime disappeared when Prohibition ended. That's pretty much a tautology.
Read the rest of my post, dear, and you'll see where your mind went blank. It seems you still haven't been able to focus long enough to read the entire post.
I'm not your "dear", and my mind isn't blank. Yours, however, is badly clouded. You seem to think that 1) drugs take control of everybody who uses them and forces them to do bad things, and 2) prohibition is a good way to deal with the illusory problem, no matter the cost.
Do you think all the little gang members will go back to school, study hard and become productive citizens?
Some of them will. The ones who chose to remain criminals will find fewer criminal opportunities, and much less income with which to fund their activities.
So let me get this straight. You believe that a druggie will be able to buy 6 hits of his drug of choice for $5, AND that said druggie will be able to hold a job in order to earn that $5? If that is truly what you believe, then I have to disagree.
I wasn't talking about crimes committed under the influence
I was.
As for the "raping women and throwing them out windows" crap, you've got a vastly overinflated idea of the power of drugs
It's not crap. . it happened. And according to this guy's record, he has committed violent acts before - always while high. If you have a hard time dealing with that, so be it.
It'd sell at the price determined by the free market... you know, supply, demand, competition, all that sort of thing.
Exactly. And desparate druggies will pay a premium for their high.
I honestly think that Prohibition-related crime disappeared when Prohibition ended.
Way to dance around the question. I see that dealing with the issues is a difficult thing for you.
I'm not your "dear", and my mind isn't blank.
Apparently it is, since you seemed unable to fathom what my original post was all about. You're still struggling with it (or perhaps just being purposefully dense).