 Okay, let's me, it's again a pleasure to introduce you, Randy Barnett. Randy is a law professor. He graduated from Harvard University and then went for a few years acting as a prosecutor. You know these guys you see in the TV series. So he had the great experience there before going back to the university and while he went to the Chicago, to the street at Chicago, that was the Cantlow of school. And now he has been in Boston, at Boston University Law School for seven years. He publishes and he has published a book which took quite a few years before getting re-published. You can find copies of it downstairs, the structure of liberty. And it's a magnificent book, I remember reading the, that was very likely one of the first version, the very, very first version which I read quite a few years ago. And he is of course a well-known lecturer at all the seminars of IHS or IES as you may, as you prefer. For quite a few years now. Well he changed the title of his lecture so he's going to talk about something completely different but never mind you will be able to listen to the original lecture later next week. During the summer university. Currently now he's going to talk on the arms to civil society of drug prohibition, Randy. Okay, well, Merci Agri for that wonderful introduction. It's a great pleasure to be here speaking to the hardcore committed IES students who are not out having a good time this afternoon in sunny Ex-En Provence. When it was raining it was much better for the professors to speak. We had much less competition but I appreciate those of you who have decided to forgo the wonders of Ex for another hour or two to come and hear my talk. Before I begin my talk I did want to, I did put a website address on the board behind me. www.lisanderspooner.org. It is a website I've put together and I'm in the process of adding material to about a relatively obscure to everyone else but prominent to libertarian 19th century radical libertarian lawyer named Lisander Spooner who worked some wonderful wonderful radical inspiring work all told amounting to six volumes of work and gradually eventually all his writings will be on this website. I don't agree with everything Spooner said but I am always inspired by reading him and therefore have tried to honor him with this website so please visit it when you get home. I would appreciate it. Also as already mentioned my book the structure of liberty is for sale downstairs just so that you know I'm very grateful to Pierre for arranging at the last minute that these books should be shipped here. IES had to pay the shipping which was a hundred dollars and then we'll have to pay the shipping of returning anyone that's not sold. So you may think about that if you decide whether to buy now or buy later. If you buy now at least you won't have to pay for the shipping. The price will include you don't have to pay extra for the shipping the way you would if you bought it on your own. Okay so I already mentioned to you that I used to be a criminal prosecutor and I have to tell you that it was one of the finest times of my life. The most fun time of my life to be a prosecutor. I wanted to be a lawyer since I was ten years old and I wanted to be a prosecutor when I was in law school I decided I wanted to be a criminal lawyer since I was ten because I wanted to see that justice was done before I knew what a professor was what a professor could do and I was fortunate I got to be a prosecutor I got to be exactly the kind of prosecutor I wanted to be which was what we call in the United States a state court prosecutor actually employed by the county to enforce state law not federal law state law is against murder, rapes, arm robberies the kind of crimes that we always used to think were the most important serious crimes before the war on drugs taught us otherwise and I was fortunate not only to be a prosecutor but to be a prosecutor in the days immediately before the United States government declared a war on drugs it's not that drugs were legal then they were illegal of course but the laws were not rigorously enforced and prosecutors spent very little of their time devoted to what we thought of as minor crimes minor offenses I was able because of my scruples to avoid any contact with drug prosecutions but that was only because there was so little of it to avoid it's sad for me to say that I could not be a prosecutor today in the United States or anywhere else because so much of what prosecutors do involves the persecution of drug users and sellers and I use the word persecution advisedly and I'll say more about what effect that has had what the government of the United States and other governments have done but I believe the government of the United States is one of the principal offenders has declared war on an aspect of civil society war on drugs is a war on the people the people who choose to use intoxicants and actually of course not all intoxicants but only the officially disapproved ones alcohol is legal in most places that's an intoxicant I enjoy myself sometimes more than others but that's legal, the others are not legal so my talk today is going to be about the harmful effects of drug law drug prohibition on civil society and I divide this topic into two parts first the harmful effects that prohibition has on drug users themselves and the second part is the harmful effects that prohibition has on everyone else in civil society normally let's talk first about drug users normally we don't care about the effect of laws prohibiting conduct on the people that violate those laws we don't care about the effect of the laws against murder we don't care the effect that has on murderers we don't care the effect of rape laws on rapists or the laws against robbery on robbers we don't care about that but drug laws are different, at least they should be part of the reason for prohibiting drugs the use of drugs prevent people from harming themselves in some way and that presupposes we're trying to help the people that we care about these people that we are going to try to stop from harming themselves however this means that if it turns out that the laws prohibiting intoxicating drugs actually works a very serious harm on the people you're trying to help then we really have to care about this we must care about this it's part of the assumption of the law to illustrate one of the many kinds of harms that drug laws cause let me tell you a story that happened while I was a prosecutor one of my jobs as a prosecutor was to interrogate suspects in the police station who were under arrest obtain confessions if possible interview witnesses the police to decide whether charges should be brought one night in the middle of the night I was called in on a case where there were two suspects under arrest and I was supposed to interrogate them let's call it that in order to obtain a confession if possible I think, I can't remember but I think neither one of these two men had confessed it up to that point oftentimes I was brought in after they'd confessed to the police then I took another confession since I was considered more independent than the police more trustworthy as a prosecutor but at any rate I interviewed these two men and from their own, well actually only one of them gave the whole story the other one admitted part of it didn't give details the name of the man I interviewed the defendant I interviewed is named Juan Caballero and he told me the following story so the story I know is the story from his own mouth three young men who he didn't know by name but their names were Michael Salcedo his brother Arthur Salcedo and the friend of theirs, Frank Musa lived close to Chicago not in Chicago they were about 18 or 19 years old and they decided one night that they wanted to smoke marijuana so unable to go to the local drugstore to buy marijuana where do you suppose they had to go to buy this perfectly benign substance as benign as alcohol, more benign where do they have to go? well, it's against the law to sell marijuana in the United States and it is as it is in most of Europe so where do they have to go? who are the people that violate the law? criminals, right? you don't go to law-abiding citizens to buy stuff that's against the law so if you're going to buy if you're going to look to purchase a good from criminals you have to go where the criminals are that's how you have to do it so where do they go? they went to a hamburger stand known as King Castle on the northwest side of Chicago which was habituated by gang members Latino gang members known as the Latin there's two gangs in the story and I'm trying to remember which was which it was habituated by members of the gang known as the Latin Eagles so they went into the hamburger store and asked the gang members who were hanging out there whether they had any marijuana to sell gang members said they didn't they weren't selling marijuana that night maybe they never did, I don't know but the one of the I think it was Frank Musa thought that really maybe they didn't trust us this is against the law maybe they think we're a policeman or something they don't trust us so in order to make a good impression on these gang members he started bragging about all the gang members he knew that he was friends with and he named this person he named that person he named the other person and it turns out that he was naming all the members of the rival gang the Latin Kings and now all of a sudden these gang members he's talking to the Latin Eagles are actually you know what I've got the story reversed I just remembered now he was talking to Latin Kings and he was bragging about his association with the Latin Eagles so all the people he was talking about were Latin Eagles but he was actually talking to the Latin Kings and finally so now these kings they got interested in this guy they said really tell us more and he's told more stories and this Frank Musa started bragging about how he used to go out on what they called hits on Latin Kings meaning they would attack Latin Kings which he never had or he would know I mean he wouldn't have made this stupid mistake if he had ever really had this kind of contact he was just bragging so whether the Latin Kings do they said oh yes well we do know how you can get marijuana after all come with us so they took these three guys in the back seat of a car and they drove them it was in the middle of winter time they drove them into an alley the kings were in two cars they drove them into an alley they put a gun on them at gunpoint they let them out of the car and made them lay face down in the snow then one by one they took them back into the car pushed the first one in the car and stabbed them to death then took them in the back seat then took the next one in the car pushed them on top of his dying brother and stabbed him to death and then saved the braggart to last Frank Musa put him in the car and stabbed him to death so all these three guys were stabbed to death in the back seat of this car anyway I mean I know the story is true because the guy who did it told me it was true and he told me why he did it they just couldn't it was against their honor to hear all these things and they just and actually I I asked him at the end of the confession because I was concerned he was pretty young himself he was probably only 20 years old or 19 years old and I was as a prosecutor anticipating what the possible defenses would be so I would ask questions in the hopes that I would imagine what a lawyer would argue later he was just a kid he got swept up into the moment you know give him at least a reduced sentence etc so I anticipate this I'm a lawyer I'm in the police station so I decided to ask him the question in anticipation of this sometimes I have to anticipate an insanity defense not here other times I have to anticipate that someone can't speak English not here but that's what I was anticipating the defense that he was a young kid got swept up in the heat of the moment so here's what I asked him I said I said Juan if you had it to do all over again would you do it again he said if it was a sure thing I said there's no such thing as a sure thing so he said well a lot of kings have killed people without getting caught referring to Latin kings not the royal kings we're studying at this conference I said I know but you got caught would you do it again he said I'd have killed well I'd have killed the braggart for sure I don't know about the other two that made pretty compelling testimony at his trial he was convicted of murder sentenced to death penalty I don't know if his death I don't actually don't know he was executed it was a long time ago he would have been by now but I have read various appeals on this case but alright the link between drug prohibition and these three deaths are obvious if these three guys they weren't the greatest guys in the world but they didn't deserve what happened to them if these three guys could buy marijuana in a local drug store they'd be alive if they could buy marijuana the way they could buy cigarettes they'd be alive they didn't have to die that winter day they didn't have to be died they didn't have to be killed slaughtered what caused that to happen was drug prohibition and this only illustrates one of the many harms to drug users that's created by drug prohibition but what is this one the first one the first harm is that drug prohibition makes users buy from criminals not only does that put them in great jeopardy as these three men found out but they have to rely on criminals to supply clean unadulterated drugs that they're going to put in their body and I can tell you more stories about that about how for example many drug overdoses by the way are not caused by the intoxicating drugs they're caused by allergic reactions to the stuff that the drugs are mixed with that's something the police don't usually tell you something that's not for example mentioned in coroner's reports autopsies, they just say drug overdose alright let me just list some more effects on drug users because I don't want to I think I'm taking too much time drug laws raise the price of drugs it's what they're supposed to do it doesn't always work that way but that's what it's supposed to do but assuming it works the way it's supposed to by raising the cost, the price higher prices obviously require drug users to forgo other expenses like what like food, like clothing, like shelter that's not good for them it's not good for their health remember we're supposed to be concerned about their health the higher prices may cause people to turn to crime in order to pay for their consumption it's not good for them either and very important, higher prices have caused users to employ much more dangerous methods of using drugs than they otherwise would employ under conditions of legality for example, injecting heroin is not done in societies that never get it illegal injecting heroin with a needle it's not the way societies originally used heroin they usually used heroin by heating it and inhaling it or smoking it now it's equally addictive if you do that but you're not likely to die of an overdose because you'll just pass out before that happens whereas if you inject something into your bloodstream you can die of an overdose rather easily by not putting in the right amount or you can inject air into your blood causing a stroke there's lots of things that can happen but injection is much more efficient a much more efficient way to capitalize on a smaller amount of more expensive drugs than the other way is it forces people to use drugs more unsafely it also accounts for example with needle sharing which contributed to diseases even before it contributed to AIDS next, drug laws induce the invention and popularity of new and potentially more dangerous drugs than the ones that they substitute for there was a great story in the Wall Street Journal back in the 80s describing how it was that cocaine became so popular in the 80s and I'll try to make this story shorter but it's an interesting one what happened was people, the US government started paying the Mexican government to spray a leaf defoliant which kills the plants by causing the leaves to fall off called paraquat on marijuana plants in Mexico this was a US government paid for program but what happened was when the plane flew overhead and sprayed this defoliant on the plants the farmers would rush out and harvest their crops because otherwise their plants would die and they would send them to market this was a very toxic chemical and now you're sending the market marijuana tainted by this chemical called paraquat well the consumers in California primarily who were using Mexican marijuana they didn't want to use tainted marijuana and these are these irrational druggies who don't care at all about their health but when faced with actually dangerous drugs in the sense that it would harm their health they didn't want to ingest it so they started searching for another supply of marijuana that wasn't being tainted by paraquat they found it in Colombia Colombia had a marijuana crop in those days so they started shipping marijuana instead of shipping it up through Mexico they started shipping it up through the Florida Keys which is closer to Colombia a whole different route of supply that the drug authorities had yet to stop when the drug authorities finally switched their interdiction policy to Florida in South Florida instead of Mexico then the smugglers marijuana is big and bulky the smugglers started trying to smuggle through stuff that was more concentrated and compact well you know what that crop is the other crop that Colombia had, cocaine and then at that time the effects of cocaine were not that well known and suppliers said look this is a non-addictive drug it's actually more fun than marijuana try it and a whole marijuana craze I mean a whole cocaine craze was found was created as a result of this drugs of this chemical spraying in Mexico if the government had left it alone this wouldn't have happened it took a long time for that to end PCP another formerly animal tranquilizer converted into a drug intoxicating drug because it could be easily made in makeshift laboratories in bathrooms in people's apartments didn't have to be imported another very more dangerous drug probably not as dangerous as it was said to be none of these drugs are ever as dangerous as they're originally said to be I should tell you but obviously more dangerous was completely a creation of prohibition same thing was true by the way during alcohol prohibition before in the United States I can't speak for Europe but before prohibition in the United States the most common form of alcohol consumption was wine and beer during prohibition wine and beer being very bulky hard to hide, hard to smuggle Americans developed a taste for hard alcohol for the first time used to be only really wild people drank that stuff to excess and then with the so Scotch and Rahman the things that made Joseph Kennedy John Kennedy's father rich smuggling Irish Scotch through the Irish Mafia that Americans developed a taste for that well after the Americans developed a taste for this more dangerous more concentrated form of alcohol it took decades before its taste maybe 50 years before its taste finally reverted to wine and beer again which it kind of has cocktails until recently were pretty unfashionable but that's but cocktails were very fashionable during a prohibition and then after prohibition all right drug laws also criminalize users what kind of this program go to I think I'm going way over here 450 450 this is bad 450 so drug laws also criminalize criminalize users it makes every drug user a criminal that can't be good for you I'm telling you it's not a good thing to be made a criminal once you're identified as a criminal you oftentimes start to act like one it changes your way of life changes your outlook we should say it also criminalization also gives the authorities the power to extract payments in the form of bribes and other extortion people who are criminals and criminalization makes it much more difficult for people to seek treatment ask yourself if we were to make alcohol illegal again whether people would be more or less likely to seek treatment for alcoholism if doing so the first step of alcohol treatment is to admit you're an alcoholic what does that mean under for other drugs it means admitting you're a criminal exactly are you going to be more or less likely to go into a situation where you're going to admit you're a criminal a lot less likely and look what's happening to these politicians who have to admit what they did so what this means in some they used to be a saying in Vietnam it turns out I think it was apocryphal it never was said but there was a saying that the left always said that some soldiers said that we had to burn down a village to save it this was a quote always attributed to a US soldier or US officer which apparently never was said but it was always a famous we had to burn down the village to save it that was considered absurd right well here's what our policy about drugs we have to punish criminalize poison rob and murder drug users to save them from the harmful effects of using intoxicating drugs that makes no sense alright now let me talk about um well let me one say one more thing about this these consequences are unavoidable because they will happen every time you try to use coercion to change people's consumption preferences and create therefore a black market and let me talk about let me tell you the second story that illustrates the harmful effects of drug laws on everyone else when I was a law student I was assigned a clerk in a prosecutor's office in a particular courtroom at that in those days in Chicago each courtroom each judge had about 400 criminal cases pending at the same time that's a lot three prosecutors one judge 400 cases one of my first jobs was to take about 25% of our cases and ship them off to new courts that were opening up on the west side of Chicago we had a 25% caseload reduction four years three years later by the time I was a felony trial assistant in a courtroom my own our caseload was about 125 cases per courtroom because of the expansion of criminal courts it was a very manageable number it eliminated a lot of plea bargaining it allowed us to try any case we wanted to try it was very very good that was before the war on drugs heated up the war on drugs heated up and guess what the caseload in each courtroom went back up to over 400 again well what does this illustrate it illustrates just one of the harmful effects on the public as a result of drug prohibition drug laws enforcement of drug laws drains resources away from other types of law enforcement away from prosecuting the kind of crimes that when I was a kid we thought were the most serious murder rape on robbery but which we know better now now here's some other consequences for everyone besides that one drug laws lead to increased crime in ways I've already explained raising prices creates increased incentives for people to commit crimes to pay for their use criminalizing users makes them out to be criminals in other areas they get into a criminal subculture and perhaps most important making drugs illegal creates a tremendous opportunity for murders and very serious assaults but primarily murders when I was a prosecutor even before the drug war heated up fully half the murders I prosecuted were drug related not in the sense that anyone was high on drugs was killed because it was thought they were a drug seller who had either money or valuable substances that could be taken from them the murder of drug dealers by other criminals was half the caseload of murders I had that's a drug law related that's a drug law related murder not a drug related murder a drug law related murder and it's only gotten more common and I could describe the way the grizzly ways these guys were murdered one guy with the scissors one guy being hit in the head with an iron bar until he was dead so they could take his money and his drugs these were cases I actually prosecuted drug dealers are very vulnerable to this because they have to operate outside of legal circles so they have to isolate themselves and they're known to have valuable substances that could be taken and no one will complain drug laws even more importantly obviously create a powerful organized crime network you know the organized crime the mafioso that we heard so much about I realize that there's always been organized crime but the big boom in organized crime originally in this century was prompted by alcohol prohibition and now a whole new wave of organized crime has been promoted by the other kinds of prohibition drug laws this is part that really bothers me in some respects the most although I can't but bothers me the most is the one I talk about last but and that is drug laws encourage enormous corruption of law enforcement officials the large sums of money available to pay off police officers particularly junior low paid police officers is just enormous just enormous and once you corrupt a judge and judges too for that matter once you corrupt a judge or once you corrupt a cop on drug laws you're in your pocket for anything they don't just stop at that actually some probably do stop at that but it's not you can't expect them all to stop at that and how does that happen why is drug laws any different from anything else well you have a black market with a tremendous amount of cash available to pay these guys and there's no victim and I don't mean no victim in the sense that no one has ever heard by drug use I mean no victim in the literal sense that there's no one to pick up the phone to complain and then be upset if the police get bought off if you're the victim of a rape if you're the victim of a burglary and the police get paid off by the other side that's risky for the police because you can complain but there's nobody to complain when you show up and make a drug bust and you find stacks of money not all of which makes it into inventory or drugs not all of which makes it into inventory the drug I mean that's the common thing that drug sellers say that the cops took the money so no complaining witness means it's just a tremendous opportunity for corruption and it just happens everywhere I should also add there's an additional consequence which is the international consequences and I'm not going to say too much about this but I believe that the drug prohibition has really caused an enormous amount of corruption in Latin American countries and it's actually corrupted the whole government caused the government to fall because these illegal substance becomes the main source of hard currency and then the drug cartel runs the country and nobody's going to stop that who's going to stop that so we export that problem drug laws lead to enormous invasions of privacy for everyone persons who engage in this kind of behavior are trying to hide their behavior from public scrutiny therefore if you're going to catch them you've got to invade private spaces to catch them there's no other way to do it you invade it with informants you invade it with searches searches without probable cause but which you afterwards make up probable cause for you invade it with electronic surveillance these techniques these techniques have to be used you cannot blame law enforcement for using the only techniques they can use to enforce laws that cannot be enforced any other way and once the precedent for using the techniques in drug law, in drug prohibition is established in the courts the way the legal system works is it's therefore legal for every other thing we have lost so many civil liberties in the United States constitutional liberties in the United States because of drug prohibition and that may be another of the major categories of consequences police can't enforce these laws without violating the constitution and prosecutors after the fact have to argue why it should be constitutional for the police to do what they did and one by one occasionally a judge will say yes and now there goes your constitutional rights it's happened all over the place okay I guess the only other thing I would talk about is the other side of the picture why do we have drug laws if this is the price that we have to pay I'll tell you one little story I gave the same speech once to a law enforcement association Illinois regional law law enforcement association made up of judges police chiefs and lawyers of various kinds I have to admit I was quite nervous about this because I'd given the speech many times and I was always the authority as I am here I'm the former prosecutor you weren't whatever you know so I can tell you this is how it is and who's going to contradict me but now I have to go in to a room full of people all of whom have much more experience than I had and tell them the same story the exact same speech this is what happens this is what it's like you know and any one of them could get up and tell you you're full of it it's not the way it is so I was pretty nervous about this I don't know what they're going to say but I decided to take a chance I gave the talk the same talk I just gave to you and then at the end of each factual claim almost every factual claim particularly I remember the one specifically when I was talking about the corruption of police this was with police chiefs in the room I would say this is happening and you know it this is happening and you know it I'd say that periodically throughout the speech and you know what after the speech not one person in that room contradicted my factual claims even I was a little surprised I mean some representatives of the department of the drug enforcement administration got up and yelled at me about the harmful effects of legalization which is what I'm turning my attention to now but nobody said I was wrong about the facts I was describing nobody they were actually pretty sympathetic I have to say alright what's the whole point of this why can't we end this policy we can't end this policy because people believe more people will use drugs if you end this policy than currently do that's basically what it boils down to everybody will use drugs or many more people will use drugs and you'll have a lot of bad consequences what do we say in response to this there's a few things to say first of all no one knows I don't care what they say with great certainty nobody knows whether drug use will increase or decrease an inappropriate fear of the unknown should not stop us from ending these consequences that we can be guaranteed of ending if we end prohibition even a moderate increase in drug use would be worth it if we could get rid of all these consequences that I've identified you also have to keep in mind that the number of people who use intoxicating drugs is very very very small as a percentage of society maybe a few million users in the United States of hard drugs maybe a few million more of marijuana but it's a very small number it's the reason why there's no political constituency for abolishing the laws because there's so few people using it if it was something very popular like alcohol there'd be much more of a political constituency for abolishing it so you really are persecuting a very small number of people and we're wreaking enormous damage on the civil society as a whole from this policy I remember once there was a speech given by Bob Bennett at that time the Reagan administration drugs are a person I can't abide to understand to listen to in a speech in California this was years ago he said that California was being too lenient on casual users of drugs which he said in his own speech were 75 to 80% of all users and how did he define casual users he defined casual users as people who use drugs less than once a week so that's who we have to be so excited about people who use intoxicating drugs less than once a week we're going to tear apart the entire legal system to get at the 85% of people who use these drugs less than once a week I ask you is that worth it I have more things I can say that I think I don't I'll get to in the question period children and whatever issues of children but I will say this ending prohibition is no panacea for crime ending prohibition is no panacea for drug use even though I think there are benefits to be had for that it's merely the first step towards restoring civil society in this area and allowing civil society to work to moderate the use of drugs the way it works to moderate the use of alcohol and even to eliminate the abuse of alcohol in the form of drunk driving which is greatly reduced because of social pressure it used to be fashionable to drive drunk I knew a lot of prosecutors that used to drive drunk we all went out drinking together I never did it of course but the others did and civil society needs to be able to handle this job and it cannot handle it as long as it's made illegal so thank you very much let's take five minutes questions you didn't say a word about seizure laws seizure laws well it's a whole other area of corruption that is just unbelievable in the United States it's possible to the practice is what's known as civil asset forfeiture civil asset forfeiture what it means is it's a civil not a criminal proceeding in which the authorities merely allege under a statute that personal property like automobiles or houses or boats or whatever have been used in the course of a drug transaction or been used to facilitate drug marketing and then the property is forfeited civil asset forfeiture is forfeited without having any hearing or showing of proof that this actually is true the burden is then on the citizen to prove that they had not engaged in illegal activity to get their property back and that no one they knew it's not enough whether or not it was the property owner who did the act if anybody else used the car or the boat for example in south Florida law enforcement officials made a lot of money and by the way the profits for this go to the police departments themselves the sale of these goods goes right into their budget and now a certain percentage of all police departments budget is made up of money from civil asset forfeiture sales in south Florida they were kept seizing all these luxury yachts because they'd go on and they'd find some little piece of drugs that were still left on from say a party where they might have 150 guests they just seized the boat didn't have to prove the owner had anything to do with it any knowledge of it they just seized the boat now you try to get it back okay I think just one point you might add stop we're speaking sorry Kristi Davis if the sales are illegal then the consumers are going to do something that most consumers don't do and that is they're going to go in for pyramid selling in other words in order to get the money to purchase the drugs you yourself become a seller of the drugs and you expand the market all the time so the process is totally self-defeating that's part of the part I skipped over in my talk in the interest of time it's particularly true with adolescents selling to other adolescents because that's who reaches down into the school yard to sell kids to your drugs to your kids and that is other kids they make money that way they can make more money that way than any other way and that's who does the actual selling the pyramid selling absolutely true hi I'm Chang from Taiwan it seems you mentioned about if we legalize drugs and we are not sure if the demand will increase or not it seems I got some impressions we can separate the demand from two sides one is the total number in the society who use drugs maybe this part won't increase because it comes from different source preference but for those person they have already used drugs because the price is falling down so according to economic theory it seems the quantity they use the drug will increase what's your comment about this interesting comment the first happened as interesting as the second half one of the assumptions of the argument that there will be a great increase in the number of users is that there is this great quantity of people who are not now abusing drugs or using intoxicants who would use it if we change the laws and I think there's no reason to be confident that that's true once you take into account that many intoxicants are legal and if people want to get intoxicated they can do so now and if people want to abuse intoxicants they can do so legally now there is no reason to believe that there are people who are not either now using intoxicants who would do so under conditions of free availability market availability so I think there's every reason to believe that the demand for this is relatively stable maybe it could change at the margin now the other issue we raised is if the price goes down won't people use more I'm sure that in some cases that will happen I think overall it's equally likely to expect that the money that is saved a lower price will be spent on other things perhaps on food and nutrition and other kinds of things it's possible and I don't think by the way there's any reason to believe that drug users will use more harmful drugs I think there's every reason to believe they will pay for drugs that don't hurt them as much you gotta remember most people who use intoxicants maybe some in this room most people who use intoxicants do so to get high for themselves and they would prefer to get high the safest way possible and that's exactly what the marijuana Paraguay story illustrates that these irrational crazed druggies wouldn't buy tainted marijuana because they didn't want to harm their health that's pretty typical so I think what you're likely to see is safer drugs certainly safer because they can buy them a safe amount can you imagine having to go by Tylenol or aspirin off a street vendor you'd really be confident about the quality of the aspirin you're getting right well that's what they have to do that's my response okay my name is Boris Todorov from Bulgaria Sofia I have a small objection to your last words and it is what if by abolishing drug laws using cocaine becomes fashionable because fashion says things that are temporary but still many people fall in love with something and what about little, not little but students or high school pupils who just decided using cocaine is just a fashion it's not a habit but it's a fashion it could go over in five years but for these five years it could do real damage I say it because in Sofia and Bulgaria now about 60% of the students in the high schools are believed to have taken small drugs, I mean light drugs and maybe about 10% cocaine is it legal or illegal in Bulgaria? it's not legal no one pursues so how are you going to stop it? you've already made it illegal and it's happening so obviously making it illegal is not solving the problem that would have been my initial reaction that is these things do become fashionable and then they wear off the fashion wears off lots of times because the initial information that drug users have is not reliable and experience remember something else drug users rightfully don't believe anything the authorities say about the harmfulness of these illegal drugs because the authorities say that every drug is harmful that they made illegal including marijuana which is one of the most studied intoxicating drugs that there's ever been and there's never been a death one single death ever attributable to the use of marijuana generations have now used it including the president of the United States and if there were going to be any adverse long term health consequences as a result of marijuana it would have come up by now we would have found out about it but it hasn't happened nevertheless marijuana in the United States is what they call a schedule one controlled substance which is the most seriously controlled substance there is why should a drug user believe what the government says or what the experts say about the harmfulness of other drugs when they're obviously lying about the harmfulness of marijuana and perhaps other intoxicants therefore when a new drug comes on the market and it's condemned for being unsafe that consumers are rightly skeptical of that by the way I usually these condemnations turn out to be wildly exaggerated and untrue maybe not always the government can't be wrong all the time but wildly exaggerated so I do think it would be more credible if actually we told the truth about some drugs intoxicating drugs so that people would believe you when you said another drug was actually harmful and that might mitigate these fads when they happen which usually happens when a new drug comes on the market which is not really controlled where the other drugs have been controlled and then it has a boomling interest in that drug until the authorities shift their resources to that drug and then we have a new drug to take its place okay let's take two more questions I'm sorry we won't be able to take everybody so there is one in the rear of the room nearby the booth yes yes is this working? yeah hi I'm Maris I'm from Montreal and it was a great story about drug legalization and everything but my only problem with it is that if you legalize drug is it just going to be another way of taxing people which mean it's going to be like cigarettes and alcohol and everything so so I mean I think it would be a great pleasure of smoking a joint and enjoying it with my friends but if it's just another way of giving money to the government well then I have a little problem with it well I'm afraid to say that it's likely to be true since when you're in other circles besides libertarian circles somebody gets up they always invariably say and not only that but look at all the money we could make by taxing it and I said well there was a reason why I didn't put that one on my list of advantages but you can expect that certainly will happen on the second floor there was you were asking yeah where is the microphone you already spoke no? no you didn't? he was first Wendy what is your comment on the use of drugs in sport? yeah I have to admit I don't really have a strong opinion it because it seems to me that it's just more part of the rules of the game that's to be set by the rule making authorities as to what they think is fair competition or unfair competition in the sport for example in baseball you can only use certain kinds of baseball bats and you can't put any substances on a baseball because it makes the baseball move in a different way that makes it harder to hit that's called a spitball that stuff on baseball I don't really know that much about baseball I don't like it very much either I'm not that kind of an American it seems to me golf you can only design clubs the golf ball is tightly regulated as to how much energy it is although it's said that the reason why golf scores have gone up so much is because they've made golf balls more explosive so people get greater distances than they used to get I just think this would be part of that that these if they're performance enhancing drugs that people think creates an unfair advantage to some that would then cause everyone else to use it like steroids etc then I think it's appropriate role for the civil society this is where the civil society comes in to decide make rules against it just as I should say it's an appropriate role of employers to decide whether their employee should be using intoxicants on the job or closely related to the job that's how the civil society ought to regulate the use of drugs airline pilots should have I don't mind them taking drug tests if there's a problem there employers should be doing this schools could be doing it although I don't see the real point the civil society should handle it and here as elsewhere it's a good question okay you move the microphone forward you have it? okay okay Yan Havel University of Economics Prague Czech Republic I have a question regarding responsibility for one's action and I think it involves all sorts of drugs including alcohol well take an example that for example I take some drugs and then commit whatever crime or something I kill someone am I responsible for killing the person even though I did not at that point have control of my body or am I responsible just for losing control of my body either way you will be held responsible and of course the same problem that exists with alcohol more commonly than anything else alcohol by the way is a drug that does that can be associated with violence unlike marijuana which is associated with eating large quantities of snack foods okay one last question on the second floor well I was just meaning to ask is it or is it not a constitutional right for a person to harm himself I mean in most countries it is in continental Europe it is it is in the US and what you have said about that I do think if you own your own body that means you should be able to that's a liberal principle you should be able to dispose use and dispose and enjoy of your body as you wish including harmful behavior look you can't do this but you can jump out of an airplane with a parachute for fun you can jump off of a bridge with a elastic cord tied to your ankles you can do all you can believe it or not people actually put long slats of wood they go up to the top of mountains and they slide down these mountains where covered with snow they run into trees they run into rocks they create avalanches they get caught up in you're constantly having to rescue these people with helicopters and dogs it's it's it's insane it's insanity they let these people do this I can't believe it they should prohibit skiing it's well I should just say this I have never skied I have also never used an illegal intoxicating drug I can find my which was hard to do when I was growing up to not use it I should say I never smoked marijuana I have never used anything harder than marijuana unlike George W. Bush I've never used cocaine and unlike President Clinton Bill Clinton who is widely known to have used cocaine extensively his brother was actually prosecuted for cocaine distribution so I've never done that I've never skied but I'll close with this there was a 19th century American legal scholar one of the first constitutional law scholars whose name was in New York he was the chancellor of equity court in New York named James Kent the law school I used to teach at Chicago Kent College of Law was named after him and he was someone who he never smoked he never drank he never drank anything but water he never played cards he never gambled he was a completely virtuous person with respect to this and at the time of the temperance movement in the 19th century was getting going people these busy bodies would go around and ask people to sign these temperance pledges and this is how Chancellor Kent who was this guy who was obviously very disciplined responded first he said politely he would not sign the temperance pledge but then the people were more adamant and insistent that he sign it and finally he said sirs I have never drank any alcohol and if by the grace of God I never will drink alcohol but I have a constitutional privilege to drink alcohol if I want to and that privilege I will never surrender that's the attitude we should have I think