Drug Policy Conference at the Cato Institute

Last week I attended a conference at the Cato Institute called Mexico's Drug War: The Growing Crisis on our Southern Border.

The place was packed. They had to use a spillover room. The big draw was Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of Drug Policy Alliance and probably the most prominent drug policy reform advocate in the U.S.

Nadelmann made a really interesting statement during his presentation (which he said so fast it seemed like he might have been on speed). He said that "prohibition represents the abdication of regulation."

What he meant was that by keeping drugs illegal, it is criminals who decide what drugs are produced and sold, who the drugs are sold to, etc. If drugs were legal, the state would have a say in all of that. Interesting way of putting it, I thought.