The commercial vices are gambling, prostitution, and drugs. The appealsof the commercial vices are so strong and widespread that attempts to prohibitthem in western countries have always failed. The evils of these vices are threefold: Those who practice them suffer, the criminals who sell them prosper, and theenforcement organizations are expensive, unsuccessful, and often corrupt. Two commercial vices have been accepted as unstoppable, but there evils have been minimized by legalization and regulation.
These arethe particular drug, alcohol, and gambling. Ethyl alcohol, the drug in beer,whiskey, and wine does more harm is causing accidents, overdose deaths,job failures, broken homes, and violence than all other drugscombined. The United States attempted to prohibit alcohol and failed. TheMafia made its money by bootlegging alcohol. The gangsters of the twentiesand thiries were in the alcohol business just as the drug peddlers oftoday are in the drug business.
Both settled trade disputes with gun fire. Whenalcohol prohibition was repealed and sale by licensed dealers was instituted,the Mafia went out of the liquor business and the revenue agents assigned tostop the illegal business went out of business too. The quality of regulatedliquor became assured and taxed, not high enough to motivate bootlegging,became a source of public revenue. Consumption of legal alcohol became onlyslightly greater than the consumption of illegal alcohol had been.
If we follow the alcohol example with all other drugs, the benefits willobtain. Much more than that, the temptation of the forbidden fruits willdisappear. The jailing of petty drug pushers will stop, together with theirtraining as future serious criminals in the crime schools which are jails. Ifwe transfer the huge sums wasted on efforts and on punishment to seriouseducation and rehabilitation programs, the drug problem will retreat to thetrivial level it was fifty years ago. At one time all but private gambling at home was illegal. So the Mafiaran the numbers rackets and secret games and the bookmaking where lawabiding citizens did their unstoppable gambling.
Now governments runlotteries and license and supervise casinos so the gangsters are largely out,cheating in minimal, and governments earn revenue instead of paying police. Prostitution is an even more emotional problem. Addiction to sex isgenetic, permanent, and deprivation has many more penalties. Prostitution isthe worlds oldest profession. Here, again, legalization and regulation inNevada was already eliminated the pimps and gangsters and reduce the policeforce.
With medical examinations and licensing of the practitioners, there willbe a radical reduction in the spread of venerel diseases, including aids. Forthose already diseased there can be a matching of buyer and sellerby coding there license cards. In conclusion, the government will take any law they can’t enforceand turn it around in order to make andsave money. But they are also making less jobs for the police and other lawenforcement agencies. I believe that in the end this way ofdoing things will more than likely hurt us overall.
