Commercial Vices

Commercial Vices


     The commercial vices are gambling, prostitution, and drugs. The appeals

of the commercial vices are so strong and widespread that attempts to prohibit

them in western countries have always failed.


     The evils of these vices are threefold: Those who practice

 them suffer, the criminals who sell them prosper, and the

enforcement organizations are expensive, unsuccessful, and often corrupt.


     Two commercial vices have been accepted as unstoppable, but

 there evils have been minimized by legalization and regulation. These are

the particular drug, alcohol, and gambling. Ethyl alcohol, the drug in beer,

whiskey, and wine does more harm is causing accidents, overdose deaths,

 job failures, broken homes, and violence than all other drugs

combined.


     The United States attempted to prohibit alcohol and failed. The

Mafia made its money by bootlegging alcohol. The gangsters of the twenties

 and thiries were in the alcohol business just as the drug peddlers of

today are in the drug business. Both settled trade disputes with gun fire. When

alcohol prohibition was repealed and sale by licensed dealers was instituted,

the Mafia went out of the liquor business and the revenue agents assigned to

stop the illegal business went out of business too. The quality of regulated

liquor became assured and taxed, not high enough to motivate bootlegging,

became a source of public revenue. Consumption of legal alcohol became only

slightly greater than the consumption of illegal alcohol had been.


     If we follow the alcohol example with all other drugs, the benefits will

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