Public health group files FTC complaint about Merck’s ‘Madagascar 3’ marketing
http://www.philly.com/philly/business/Public-health-group-files-FTC-complaint-about-Mercks-Madagascar-3-marketing.html?cmpid=138890509
I blogged earlier about a middle ground approach between our current idiotic war on drugs and what prior to that point was my only other solution, full legalization of drugs. The problem with my previous post was it basically required selective enforcement of the law, something I think is morally and ethically wrong. This post serves as an answer to that complaint.
The above article is a _perfect_ example why the middle ground approach is so critical to minimizing the overall cost to society for drugs. The pharmaceutical industry has already saturated advertising for prescription drugs (when I started to track the ‘biz, more dollars were spent on R&D than on advertising, something that reversed about 20 years ago and has got steadily worse since then) where idiot consumers are convinced to bully their doctors into ordering drugs that are not only not going to help, but might actually hurt and in quite a few cases, expensively replace something that already works better. Now Merck is directly targeting kids using the same sort of advertising that pushes nutrient free products on credulous little minds. Hopefully Merck will get its hand slapped hard, but somehow I think we have started to slide down the slippery slope to Idiocracy (I really need to make time to watch that movie!).
What does this have to do with illegal drugs? Well, it is the obscene profits in illegal drugs that create and sustain the criminals, remove that and they dry up and blow away. However, by fully legalizing drugs we are now left with the exact same problem, just turned a bit on its head. Now the pharmaceutical companies are incentivised to heavily advertise their products as a way to hook young users and keep them as customers for life. The hybrid approach I mentioned in the post alluded to above I think is the right one, but for the selective element, but with a bit of tweaking I think already has a functioning analog. If you look at how duty-free products are managed, purchasers are limited to the volume they can purchase and carry. Also, there is very limited advertising for duty-free shops and restrictions on access to the shops. If we carry the same sort of idea to drugs, we limit the amount any one person can carry at once, limit the shopping locations (several states still have Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) stores) and limit the advertising (inside the stores there is plenty, as there is in highly relevant trade magazines, but nothing on radio, print, Internet, etc.). Of course, the state has to resist the urge to increase its revenues by doing its own advertising (like the highly discriminatory lottery advertising), something one can’t automatically assume.
This approach gives us what I feel is the best of all possible worlds (presuming the state can restrain its advertising urges, of course): it eliminates the massive profit margins of the (currently illegal) drugs, thus eliminating the fuel for a massive class of exceptionally dangerous criminals, it produces what is likely to be a very substantial stream of tax revenue while at the same time it also robs the producers from engaging in massive advertising campaigns targeting our quite credulous society. There will remain the small time ‘hood pushing drugs, perhaps grown in his basement or backyard, just like we _still_ have moonshiners, but it will be relegated to the fringes and there simply won’t be enough money in it to corrupt our law enforcement officers. Also, by having caps on what any one person can purchase or carry (just like in duty free stores) we keep any smuggling to small-time as once you get cocky and get too big, you get arrested, tried, convicted and put away (though likely for just a few months instead of the idiotic sentences we have today). Give that the smaller amounts are perfectly legal, only occasionally stupid people and those really interested in becoming illegal dealers will ever be ‘caught’ and instead of wasting our professional legal resources on a gram here or an ounce there, they can instead focus on real criminals (or real stupid people).
Yes, I know this is wishful thinking, just like so many of my other posts, but it heartens me to realize that there is a viable solution that doesn’t require a nanny state but also doesn’t create a situation that is quite arguably equally as bad as our current one.
