Drug Pusher

There's a great summary at the Idle Pen Pusher of this interesting editorial in The Economist on drugs policy.

Like both of them I am in favour of legalisation.

However, there is one issue I’m still nervous about and haven’t yet seen a decent discussion of. When we talk about legalisation do we mean the legalisation just of all current drugs, or do we mean that we are legalising the development of all new drugs as well?

I would be nervous about saying to the Pfizers and GlaxoSmithKlines of the world that they were now free to use their multi-billion pound R&D and marketing budgets to develop and sell the most addictive (and potentially health-damaging) substances they can. This would then create a ongoing burden on the taxpayer to either: create treatments for each new ever-more-powerful drug (if the state is offering treatment); or to deal with the cost of any acquisitive crime by addicts (if the state is not offering treatment).

If the tax raised on sales of these new drugs were enough to offset these costs, then that’s fine; but with the drug companies incentivised (through ongoing sales) to create more addicts, and the govt incentivised (through cost pressures) to cure them, wouldn’t we be in danger of creating an ‘arms race’ between drug companies and the State?

Does anyone have any views on this?

Cheers

WF