Drugs In Jail

Prohibition will never work. The War on Drugs will always be a failure. There is no clearer signal than the continued prescence of narcotics in prison. If we can not keep our prisons drug free, there is no hope for a free (or formerly free) society. A mature perspective would be to accept adult drug use and end Prohibition.

Until then we will have stories like this. Two jail guards in Liberty County Texas were arrested for conspiring to deliver marijuana and excstacy to a federal inmate.

What would cause two jail guards to become drug dealers?

Money. Demand for drugs will always create supply by raising prices. When prices are high enough even law enforcement will sell drugs. Prohibition creates an artificially high price for drugs and limits the producers to criminals and corrupt cops. These two guards are not merely bad apples, they are a predictable externality of Prohibition. Ergo, when you choose Prohibition you are choosing to corrupt law enforcement.

When I was a prosecutor in East Texas we had a problem with drugs in our county jail. I would have inmates on the “jail chain” plead guilty and accept probation. Often these inmates had been in jail 30 days or more. Guess what? Many would fail their first drug test. The speculation was that trusty inmates who worked outside of the jail found a way to smuggle drugs in. Right…..

When drugs are legalized this corruption will end. We will win the drug war by choosing new suppliers, not by building more prisons.