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| quote: | Originally posted by RJT
Unfortunately, the only evidence I've seen of drug costs in a legal v. illegal situation is with herb, and as far as that goes - it's near exactly the same price for good weed illegally as it is legally, and in some cases, it's actually more expensive to purchase legally than illegally. |
True, but that is because legal herb is still a small scale thing. I think this problem would go away if the majority of drugs were legal the same way alcohol is. In order to get rid of black market competition the government would have to sell drugs at fair market value, not black market value. They couldn't sell coke for $180 a ball or street dealers would just undercut them to $150 because they could still make money. There comes a point where the price will drop enough to where it no longer becomes worth a person's while to risk jail to traffic drugs and the black market would disappear. The government could grant large scale contracts for the production of drugs to corporations which would be able to supply them at much lower prices than current drug producers can. This is what happened with alcohol, when prohibition ended and large, efficient distilleries and breweries started making alcohol again the bootleggers went away.
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