Because it's "4/20" - A quick word on drug legalization

Last week Conor Friedersdorf asked this question:

Let's look at some numbers. 2,977 people were murdered on September 11, 2001. How many folks died from the Mexican Drug War in 2010?

More than 12,000.

That suggests another question. Would you rather legalize most drugs... or see the equivalent carnage of four 9/11s happen every year from fighting the black market? That isn't a hypothetical. It's a real choice.

So I emailed him, and asked him my own question:

Something like 35,000 people a year die in America from vehicular collisions. So I have a question for you: would you rather ban cars or see the equivalent carnage of nearly twelve 9/11s happen every year from vehicle collisions?

Obviously these are not the same, but the point is that if "absolutely minimizing deaths no matter what the details are" is your goal then cars are way deadlier than the War on Drugs.
But here's the real point I want to make. Friedersdorf seems to imply that 12,000 less people would die per year if we ended the War on Drugs. But how many deaths would occur from the sudden legality of those drugs? Can we really say that exposing 300 million+ Americans to a lot of legalized drugs wouldn't result in a surge in overdoes fatalities?
You might say "we just want to legalize marijuana," which is laudable, but not what we are discussing here. Drug lords from Colombia aren't building submarines to smuggle marijuana into the United States. The War on Drugs is about cocaine, heroine, methamphetamine, painkillers, and a whole host of drugs more addictive and more deadly than just weed. And besides, Friedersdorf starts his thought experiment with the idea that we would "legalize most drugs."

Maybe marijuana illegality is something I should reconsider. But Friedersdorf really needs to define what he means by "most drugs." I have a feeling his "most drugs" would quickly become a list of just a few, in which case...if any drugs remained illegal then by extension the War on Drugs would continue and so would the border deaths, and we've come all the way back around to square one.


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