The war on drugs, tobacco style

What happens when officials decide to ban tobacco inside a prison? Exactly what happens when you ban drugs in the outside world.

Here is Gary Becker’s take on the war on drugs, written for a general audience on the Becker-Posner blog.

Roland Fryer, Paul Heaton, Kevin Murphy, and I have written an academic article on the impact of crack cocaine. It’s not so favorable towards the war on drugs either.

I’ve never been a staunch proponent of legalization, but over the last few years I have been increasingly coming around to the idea. My primary concern is that the politicians will blow it, but for my undergraduate economics of crime class the current paper topic is to do a cost-benefit analysis of legalizing marijuana, so I don’t want to spell out my concerns and make the assignment too easy for them!

(Thanks to Dean Strachan for pointing out the Black Market Smokes article.)