Drug reform and economics

A week or two ago, the issue of drug law reform was again in the news because some advocacy group no one had heard much of before put out a bit of PR stuff about how a panel had met (largely comprising retired politicians, it seems) and decided the "war on drugs" had failed and there should be reform.

When I actually looked at their glossy press release, I thought it was remarkably lightweight and hardly worth the attention. One prominent person on the panel, Dr Alex Wodak, has been calling for drug easing for decades, although how he expects it to help the already heavy drug using population of inner Sydney that he treats has never been clear to me.

Anyway, I was quite happy to see on the weekend that a sort of backlash against the wooliness of this exercise appeared in both Fairfax and News Limited.

Bruce Guthrie wrote:

I am still wondering how the release of their wafer-thin report got the whole country talking about surrendering to illicit drugs. I'm left to conclude that the one-day wonder - for it flamed, burned and went out in less than 24 hours - spoke more to the state of media malleability than it did to our drug laws.

The product of a think tank called Australia21, the basis for its call seemed to be little more than a round table at which a bunch of retirees talked about what they should have done about the drug problem when they had jobs that empowered them to do it - people such as former West Australian premier Geoff Gallop and former federal police commissioner Mick Palmer.

But for real detail on why drug law reform should not remove prohibition, have a look at Henry Ergas' column in the Australian, and (perhaps more importantly, since he links to his source material), his blog entry.

I had not realised that there were economists had considered the question in such detail. While I am generally suspicious of Ergas, as he appears to be climate change skeptic and has devoted much time to criticism of the Gillard carbon pricing scheme, his take on drugs is detailed and (it seems to me) well argued.

I would also point out that you can tell that the issue is a complicated one when you even get strong disagreement on the issue amongst the readers of soft Left blog Larvatus Prodeo.

[And here's news: when checking that LP link, I just saw that the blog is ceasing to exist. Quite a surprise, even though it had become pretty dull in the last couple of years.]