 What was the consequence of alcohol prohibition? Anybody know? Consumption of alcohol went down significantly early and then slowly ticked up and by the time Prohibition ended in 1933 About it was back to about 70% of what it was during prohibition. So people didn't stop drinking People didn't stop drinking at all during prohibition Indeed what a prohibition actually resulted It resulted in massive increases in crime it resulted in organized crime in the mafia in Dramatic increases in what we call cartels today, but in mafia activity back then in Al Capone in the rest of all the All the New York and Chicago all of that was built around prohibition. What does prohibition do? Prohibition raises the price demands still there raises the price for the good And if the price goes up if the price goes up What happens? Well, the price goes up and the risk goes up The risk of selling the risk of producing the risk of transporting Now the risk is very high Who is willing to engage in such risk? Well people who are willing to engage in violating the law criminals The price goes up because the risk is increased what happens to quality it goes down Quality goes down price goes up demand goes down. So yes use of alcohol went down To about 70% of previous but also The appeal of it goes up. Ooh, it's illegal. Isn't that cool? We could go to speakeasy tonight and people who probably Wouldn't have thought of really drinking before prohibition probably drank in prohibition because it was cool. It was Just like a lot of kids do drugs not because drugs are important but because it's a way of standing up to their parents to authority to the man So as risk goes up as criminals get involved as As competition gets eliminated by force by the way because that's the only way to deal with competition when there's no law When you're outside of the law This is to the anarchists in the group when you're outside of the law The only way to get rid of your competition is violently. I mean the existence of cartels and mafias and organized crime is An indictment against anarchy because they live in a sense in a world of anarchy They live in a sense in a world with no law and as a consequence what you get is immense violence between the cartels So again, the people engaged in activity have to be violent because they have to defend their turf against other violent people and That plenty of people get caught in the Crossfire so what prohibition does is it increases the cost Decreases the quality because there's no competition So you go to you go to speakeasy and you order some whiskey and it's not really whiskey It's some cheap imitation and what are you gonna do? You can't complain and all other speakeasies it's not like there are other products there are other available You can't choose between 55 different forms of whiskey. There's just a one And it happens to be crap Prohibition of course lasts until December 1933 When the 21st Amendment was ratified and prohibition goes away The mafia stays organized crime stays why well because they're still victimless crimes Whether it's prostitution Whether it's gambling That's what The mafia focuses on and of course Then ever more increasingly they focus on drugs as drugs become more and more illegal In 1937 demo marijuana tax act is passed federal law placed tax on sale of cannabis hemp or marijuana now States state law prohibited some drugs over this period But the war on drugs really they're not going to introduced until 1970 When president Nixon signed the control substance act Which called for the regulation of certain drugs and substances It basically took drugs and classify them into five different categories Schedule one drugs which are considered the most dangerous and illegal And they you know, they high they pose a high degree risk of addiction little evidence of medical benefits They claim and those include marijuana LSD heroin MDMA which is ecstasy and cocaine and Then they have class 2 drugs class 3 drugs type 4 class 5 right and class 5 would include something like cough medication Which has a small amount of codeine? No big deal, right Now this is federalized in June of 1971 Nixon officially declares a war on drugs Stating drug abuse as public enemy number one not just drug trade not just drug importation not just drug Manufacturing but the consumption of drugs is now Illegal and there's a war on it now. Remember what a war is war usually engages the military in actions Overseas against an invader or somebody threatening the United States now the war is engaged with domestic people people using drugs people Producing drugs in the United States. There's a war against Americans in 1973 Nixon creates the drug enforcement administration the DEA the DEA starts out with 1470 special agents and a budget of less than 75 million as of Recently, I'm not you exactly what year this is the agency had 5000 agents and a budget of 2.03 Billion dollars went from 75 million to 2 billion and that is a fraction of what is actually spent on the war on drugs Because one of the things that the war on good drugs Involves it's not just the DEA It involves dozens of federal agencies Dozens of federal agencies both agencies focused on law enforcement domestically like tobacco and firearms but also agencies that involved in Military activities or espionage activities outside the US For example, the CIA is actively engaged in the war on drugs the NSA National You know the guys who listen the guys who track your emails the guys who do all the electronic stuff We're back doors into all our electronic devices who are listening right now to this conversation Well, it's public. So no big deal that they're listening that I have a feeling they often listen to my private conversations the NSA is Involved in the drug war they view it as a national security threat And they listen in in support of the DEA and other federal agencies with regard to Drug war and I know this firsthand. I was at the NSA. I spent a whole day at the NSA They told me this and I argued with them the drugs were not a national security threat They would have nothing of it They insisted it was and it was part of their mandate to listen in on Conversations related to drugs now. That's a lot of conversations That's a lot of activity in and out of the United States. So The drug war is Expansive extensive and unbelievably destructive You know one-fifth of all the incarcerated population is Serving time for a drug charge one-fifth four hundred and fifty six thousand people Another one point one five million people in the United States on probation and parole for drug-related offenses now notice That's one point one five plus 456, let's say one point five million Americans one point five million Americans and that's just right now But there are many more Americans have a criminal record related to drug a drug offense that is a victimless crime This is possession or sale or something would not talk about violence That means that they can probably not get any student loans Many colleges will not accept them Many jobs they can't have This literally involves the destruction of the lives of 1.5 million people many of them by the way minorities because the war on drugs Clearly affects minorities in dramatic ways more than it does anyone else 1.5 million I'm never gonna be able to go to school get a job A number of Americans arrested for possession has tripled since 1980 Reached it reached 1.3 million arrests in 2015 1.3 million arrests in 2015 alone Right, and that's just for possession It's not for trade for sale Which is another large number smaller than that but large number. So you have here a Whole police activity Engages stopping people from using drugs that hurt themselves themselves again, you're much more likely to commit a crime While intoxicated that you are to commit it to crime on drugs Now let's go through some of the damage the war on drugs does What prohibition does is it raises the chances that drugs will be tainted It increases the possibility of overdose And it increases the possibility of getting a disease from the drugs It's hard to buy syringes because You know you need now a prescription you need a reason so because syringes are associated with drugs and We we don't allow the sale of syringes So people use syringes they use use syringes they get hepatitis B hepatitis C. They get AIDS from syringes Drugs a tainted the quality of the drugs is reduced because again, there's no market. There's no competition. There's no Way To to to say oh no this provider of drugs is is is terrible. You should use drugs from this guy I mean this is about monopolization by force of certain areas. You can't Can't pick and choose, you know, you can now with my one it when it's legal, but it's illegal. You're stuck with a one provider so Drug prohibition Creates more deaths more disease more overdoses and actually more use of stronger drugs And this again economics would tell you once you outlaw All drugs Then people want the biggest buck a biggest bang for the buck Which means the strongest drug The stronger form of Moana the strongest form of heroin the strongest form of cocaine Because if I'm gonna pay for it, I might as well really get what I'm paying for and again, there's no quality control There's no rating agencies. There's no consumer reports. There's there's nothing So you get more sick people you get more diseased people you get more dead people There's also less investment in treatment I you know, I first time I heard this point was from Gary Becker the the great Chicago Economist and he said look imagine if you legalize drugs tomorrow There'd be a whole industry of helping people get off of drugs There'd be a whole industry of helping people get off of heroin get off of cocaine Stop the addiction and it would be above board. It wouldn't have to be secret And of course all of that doesn't exist There'd be better ways of delivering the drugs you wouldn't necessarily have to use needles They might be more efficient ways to get the same effect without taking on the risks of using needles Thank You Vonda. I really appreciate the support. So there are many many Benefits to legalization that actually dramatically not a little bit dramatically reduce the risk of using drugs Now some of you would say well if you would use the risk of using drugs more people use them maybe But the empirical evidence suggests that's not true Portugal which decriminalized drugs I think in 2000 has not seen a dramatic increase in usage actually is seen a decrease particularly among young people It's just taking out the romance out of it Taking out the problem, you know, they see drug users for what they really are losers the only people who can actually Get quality drugs And pay prices for high quality drugs The wealthy who in Silicon Valley micro dose LSD and in Wall Street Snort cocaine and they get high quality stuff But most people the people who are Addicted to this stuff get the junk And therefore much more likely to die and you can see that in the opioid crisis The opioid crisis to a large extent is because all of this is underground. There's no quality control There's no market People get addicted. It's very hard to get out of the addiction. There's no investment in Services to get people out of addiction We rely on the state to do it all because the state is the one that's prohibited. This should all be privatized So the one drugs kills people who use the drugs, but beyond that Prohibition creates violence. I mean the degree of violence is in it's hard to measure Not just in the United States, but in Colombia and Mexico in Afghanistan and all over the world wherever drugs are produced manufactured traded Move from place to place the amount of violence that follows the drugs is just unbelievable in Mexico Something like 85,000 people have died over the last couple of decades 85,000 people Nobody nobody actually measures the numbers of people who die in the United States because of violence related to drugs But something like 45% of all the murders in New York City are Related to drugs in one way or another related drug cartels turf wars gang wars innocent bystanders so Drug prohibition creates cartels organized crime The organized crime has an incentive to become more and more sophisticated in terms of its violence its intimidates and People die and the number of people who die from the violence created by the war on drugs Far exceeds the number of people who die from overdose or the number of people Who suffer from that and if you legalize them the number of people who died from overdose would plummet and the number of people who died from the Damage of the from the violence would plummet and then finally and I think this is really crucial drugs encourage corruption Drunk hotels have a lot of money Because it's illegal. It's incredibly profitable They use that money to bribe police officers military personnel at the borders judges all kinds of officials Police who make very little money get offered suitcases full of cash To turn away from a victimless crime. Why not do it? Why not go into policing? in order to take advantage of the Of the huge amounts of money every movie you watch every movie you watch where police are corrupt They're corrupted by the drug trade and I don't think that's an accident. I think that's a reflection of reality It's unbelievable the quantities of money they deal with cash easy to corrupt officials and in Mexico It's not like if you don't accept a bribe The cartel just walks away. You don't accept a bribe the cartel will kill your kids so The cartels are so powerful that they force people in a sense to take the bribe and You can see this over and over gone You know somebody mentions the movie so because it was done years and years ago decades ago And the one drugs has it a one every one it is there less drugs in America today because of the Trillion-dollars by the way we spent at the federal level one trillion dollars on the war drugs and what have we achieved? The death and destruction of many many lives millions arguably given how many people have landed up in jail because of this I cannot think of a policy that relates to police more Horrific and damaging and destructive than the war drugs not because I care about the users I don't care that much about the users But I care about the corrupting influence it has on the police. I care about the corrupting in about that the violence that it spreads in our communities and One of the things one of the things that we're seeing right now One of the things that it does to the police is not just corrupting them It militarizes them it forces them a trillion dollars for what a trillion dollars on paying salaries of everybody on buying equipment on Doing missions on whatever the DEA and all these law enforcement agencies do with regards to the war on drugs one trillion dollars Since 1971 when it was launched But think about the fact that these cartels are bigger and bigger guns these gangs have bigger and bigger guns so the police need bigger and bigger guns and in the name of the war on drugs the The police now get massive quantities of military equipment from the military from the military it's Yeah, I forgot to mention this with regard to corruption think of the civil forfeiture laws a big reason for the civil forfeiture laws was around drugs Most of the civil forfeitures around You know the commission of a drug crime I mean it just goes on and on and on the amount of policing that is engaged in drugs That is engaged in the war of drugs is astounding you could probably have half the police that we have today if you got rid of the war on drugs But going back to this militarization because this is a big deal right now Not only is the military involved not only the NSA and the CIA and the immigration and custom enforcement departments of the DHS and the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI and all these agencies involved in this right But we have historically tried to separate the activities of the military from the police and yet since the war on drugs We have systematically been selling military equipment from the military to the police The start in 1981 where bill was passed called the military cooperation with law enforcement act Which allowed the Department of Defense to share information with local police departments and to participate in local counter drug operations and To transfer excess military equipment and other materials to domestic law enforcement for the purposes of combating illegal drugs This is a federal law which has evolved over the years There's been a number of iterations of it But it's basically led to the sale from the Department of Defense to police of aircraft armor riot gear surveillance equipments and weapons None of which is needed for regular law enforcement All of which is needed if you're going up against well-equipped dangerous gangs all funded by the drug by drugs By the fact that we have a drug law and the more vicious the drug war becomes The higher the prices drug cell for the more cash these people have now not only that But some of the police tactics the number of SWAT teams is Exploded every little county has a SWAT team every little town police force has a SWAT team fully equipped and trained often by the military For what primarily to engage in the drug war now think about no knock raids We've heard about no knock raids. We just had a case of a no knock raid They they they went into the wrong place wrong apartment these people You know went for a gun because they didn't know was breaking into their place and the police shot them completely innocent people And this happens a lot Happens a lot But why did no knock trade no knock raids happen? Because of the war on drugs almost all no knock raids Where they just forced themselves into your house imagine that the police just forcing themselves into your house Why would they do that? Well, because they think you're trading storing producing drugs almost all these no knock drug raids are involved a drug drug related Eliminate the war drugs you eliminate these issues You eliminate the number of interactions between police and people The reason police search cars when they stop you for a traffic stop is They're looking for drugs drug pepper fanalia drug production equipment If you get rid of the drug Motivation you get rid of the motivation to search your car and Often you get rid of the reason for them to stop the car and to begin with Now there's massive it looks like racial bias with regard to the war and drugs If it goes away I mean think of the 1.1 million people who have it on the criminal record there many more of that But currently right now either on parole or in prison 1.5 million Think of all the past people. I just can't think of any one law That is more damaging more You know causes more violence Causes more potential for bad action by the cops Causes more distortion of policing causes more police corruption Than the war on drugs if you really care about police reform real police reform Then the first thing you should want to do is eliminate the war on drugs. That should be the first plaque on Anything now there are other things like one immigrants and other but one drugs is the biggest one of all of them There's no question that it is by far the worst and by far the reason why Polices as aggressive as they are Because the bad guys have become so aggressive and the bad guys are so aggressive Because there's a huge monetary cost here now the best treatment of this I have seen is Then a fantastic TV series one of my favorites all time called The name believe it or not is just slipped from my mind Baltimore multiple seasons Somebody's gonna tell me on and I've talked about it before so somebody's gonna tell me on the on the chat the name of the show but The show itself the wire of course the wire This if for some reason I kept thinking the wall the wall. No, it's the wire and The wire I think it's season three But the whole wire is all about the drug trade. It's all about the drug trade versus the cops It one of the characters one of the bad guys in on the drug side actually gets an MBA In order to run the drug business better and turn it more into a business and of course that never works so so you know The number of victims the number of people who die in the show for no reason Because of again a victimless crime because of that because of the violence instigated by this Prohibition it's just astounding and a shocking and it's depressing and it's sad But in one in season three I think it is the police are so pissed off because the fact is they're fighting this war drugs year after year after year after year They arrest people they put people in jail. They catch huge stores of cocaine and heroin or whatever and it makes zero difference Zero difference. It just keeps going on and on and on and on So in season three they legalized drugs They basically say to the drug cartels to the gangs Here's few does a few blocks of Baltimore that are deserted deserted homes. Nobody lives there Nobody nobody functions there. You can have that Basically create a market there We will protect your ability to sell drugs there With no harm will protect you from each other and we won't enforce the law in this few blocks of deserted property and The fact is astounding truly astounding What happens is that the neighborhoods where the drug dealers were selling drugs on every corner of every street Suddenly blossom people go out of their homes kids go out to play People plant flowers These neighborhoods are reborn in the poorest parts of Baltimore because the drug trade has moved away It's moved to this safe zone and within the safe zone nonprofits come in Providing clean needles to the users providing medical services providing Mental health services to try to help the users get over the drugs or at least they say why they use it and Crime in the city and this is the thing that really astounds everybody crime in the city plummets And of course the mayor doesn't know about all this the police are doing this quietly behind the mayor's back and Suddenly the mayor sees crime is going way down Way down the number of killings the number of murders the number of burglaries the number of every aspect of crime violent crime goes down And the mayor is astounded by this and at some point he discovers it and he stays quiet about it But then then the Bush administration finds out about it and they shut it down And you see at the end of the season how everything goes back to the way it was The street dealers go back into the neighborhoods the flowers get destroyed the kids go back into the homes They can't play outside the violence escalates murders go up every aspect of crime goes up so It's a beautiful Concretation of what would happen if drugs were legalized you can also go to Portugal and see it in Portugal criminalized decriminalized drugs in 2000 so it's been 20 years now And it's been an amazing Amazingly success story So I recommend the wire it's on HBO you can get in an HBO and I would watch it I think it's five seasons all excellent, but that season where they legalize drugs is Exceptional truly exceptional Okay so You drug legalization if you really care if you care about police brutality if you care about police corruption If you care about the police if you care about the victims of the police no matter who you care about Worn drugs is wrong now ultimately the war of drugs is wrong now because of any of the things I said although all of them are true Though drugs is wrong because it is a violation of individual rights The role of government is to protect rights the role of government is To protect us for those that would harm us Those would who defraud us those would steal us or take our lives It's not to regulate what we consume what we take into our bodies It's not to stop us from committing suicide. It's not to stop us from doing immoral things It's not to make us good people or good citizens It's to protect us And the war drugs does none of that it does the opposite It actually violates the rights of people To do wrong things to do bad things to themselves But if we're gonna protect the right of good people to use their mind to use their reason to live for themselves To pursue their happiness There's no way to protect that right Without protecting the right of people To destroy their lives so again, I don't advocate for legalizing drugs for the sake of the junkies I advocate for the legalization of drugs for the sake of those of us who don't use drugs and Want to live in safety for the sake of police Who don't we don't want to go up against these violent gangs? And I don't want them to be tempted by corruption and for the sake of the principle The principle that it's not the business of government to be involved in such things Because once they try to tell us what we can consume with regard to drugs It's also gonna be with regard to food what we drink what we eat and everything else and we see that of course We see that of course so one of the most immoral Made one of the most destructive laws on the books as the law of drugs not only should it be decriminalized Drug should be legalized legalized What we need today what I call the new intellectual would be any man or woman who is willing to think Meaning any man or woman who knows that men's life must be guided by reason by the intellect Not by feelings wishes women's or mystic revelations Any man or woman who values his life and who does not get want to give in to today's of the stare cynicism and impotence and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist Using the super chat and I noticed yesterday when I appealed for support for the show many of you step forward and actually Supported the show for the first time. So I'll do it again. Maybe we'll get some more today If you like what you're hearing if you appreciate what I'm doing then I appreciate your support Those of you who don't yet support the show, please take this opportunity go to your own book show comm slash support or go to subscribe star.com you're on book show and And and make a kind of a monthly contribution to keep this to keep this going. I'm not sure when the next