That’s a problem because it’s unfair, but it doesn’t make much of a difference in the greater issue of solving the drug problem, just like knocking off Escobar made no real difference. Cocaine is more available and cheaper and more pure than it was when he was around. Most of the people for drugs in our prisons are real small timers, not even close to being drug kingpins. Those making good money in the drug trade generally can figure out ways to get out of trouble or at least get really good deals. I was in court a while back and saw a guy caught with over 200 pounds of cocaine plead to a sentence that will only keep him locked up a few months. He had come up with something like a hundred grand to forfiet to the prosecutors. Then of course we have the cases where people get decades in prison for selling tiny amounts. The guy with the 200 pounds of cocaine, the tailored suit and the high priced attorneys may be a lot bigger fish than all the little guys we usually see going through the system, but the little guys don’t have big money to buy better deals. But really, if the guy with in excess of 200 had have gotten several decades in prison it wouldn’t have made any difference in the supply of drugs. It wouldn’t have made them more expensive or harder to get. It wouldn’t have mattered at all, just like it really didnt make much of a difference when Pablo Escobar went down, a man selling billions of dollars worth of cocaine, one to whom 200 pounds of cocaine would have just been table scraps. As long as there is demand, that demand will be met.
“But really, if the guy with in excess of 200 had have gotten several decades in prison it wouldn’t have made any difference in the supply of drugs. It wouldn’t have made them more expensive or harder to get. It wouldn’t have mattered at all, just like it really didnt make much of a difference when Pablo Escobar went down, a man selling billions of dollars worth of cocaine, one to whom 200 pounds of cocaine would have just been table scraps. As long as there is demand, that demand will be met.”
I’m a big believer in deterrents. I think it works beautifully if courts and legislators just go along. If you did go to jail for life for hauling 200 pounds of cocaine as a mandatory sentence, we would have far fewer drug traffickers. A drug dealer is going to ask himself which is more important: the possibility of spending life in prison or keeping his freedom and not being rich. The smarter ones will decide to change careers or decide not to get into it in the first place. As long as teenagers know there’s a big punishment fewer will become dealers. The problem of illegal drugs is the liberalization of the court system. It occured almost simultaneously.