The text has an excerpt about the legalization of drugs and how it would affect their elasticity. The article has two different perspectives, one that agrees with legalizing drugs and one that doesn't. One side argues that the legalization of drugs will not change the inelasticness of the demand for drugs, that regardless what the price people will still have the same demand for them, and if it were to increase, it would only be slightly. If drugs were to become legal it would reduce drug trafficking and would help problems that arrive from trying to deter selling and using of drugs like, enlarged police forces, overcrowded prisons, overburdened court systems and human costs.
In contrast, one the main arguments of the opponents of legalizing drugs are that drugs are in fact, elastic; Drugs in fact would sell more in the price went down because of them being legal. They claim that "occasional users" that may not do drugs all the time because the prices are high and because drugs are illegal, may do more if the prices go down. These users often use substitutes for expensive drugs, such as alcohol. Overall, from this perspective people feel that drugs will become more acceptable to society, therefore increasing the demand.
I can see the pros and cons of both sides. I believe that legalizing drugs would prevent a lot the the hassle associated with illegal drugs. People who do drugs are going to do them regardless if they are legal or not. Drugs are a sickness and are associated with psychological and physical issues on why they choose to do them. On the other hand the idea of not making drugs legal because these "occasional users" may use more is not as logical to me as the opposing side. Personally I don't believe in occasional users, all addicts have problems no matter how much they use. If drugs were to become legal, if these people only use drugs sometime I would assume that they will continue to only use drugs sometime, no matter the price.
I read that section in the book while in class on Thursday and i thought it was kind of ridiculous that they did not mention the drug that people are actually trying to get legalized(marijuana) they just jumped straight into the stuff that kills people (crack cocaine and heroine). I believe that if weed was legal and the government taxed it like cigarettes and alcohol that there is a lot of money to be made. An externality of that is if weed was legal all of the people in jail on marijuana related crimes that we (as tax payers) spend an average of $35000 per year on would be released and tax payers could avoid paying that tax.
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