How legalising drugs can lead to dismantling gangs: Woode-Smith

The dominance of violent gangs in South Africa is fueled by the illegal drug trade, and despite the government’s attempts to crack down, these efforts have proven futile. Nicholas Woode-Smith argues that the only effective solution is to decriminalize and legalize drugs. By allowing legitimate businesses to take over production and distribution, the influence of gangs would diminish, consumer safety would increase, and new tax revenues could fund rehabilitation and law enforcement. It’s time to end the irrational criminalization of drugs and dismantle the criminal enterprises they sustain.

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By Nicholas Woode-Smith

The only way to truly eliminate the dominance of organised crime in South Africa is to remove its sources of income. And, with few exceptions, the murderous and violent gangs that plague our streets are funded by illegal drugs.

The solution to this scourge, as put forward by the government and even opposition parties, has been to clamp down harder on the drug trade. To strongly condemn drugs, innocuously make them even more illegal, and to punish those involved – as if drugs aren’t already illegal and requiring legal action.

While the Democratic Alliance (DA) has a strong plan to combat crime, with a focus on decentralisation and professionalism. Despite the DA’s presence in their ranks the Multi-Party Charter’s (MPC) plan is unfortunately weaker.

The fundamental reason for this weakness is a fixation on continued criminalisation of drugs and further a focus on destroying the drug trade. Such a strategy has no basis in the actual reality of the drug industry. And while it is good that the MPC calls for treating drug users like victims of addiction, rather than the criminals themselves, ensuring “harsh consequences” for drug dealers and traffickers will accomplish very little.

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Destroying the drug trade will take manpower, professionalism, skill, and wealth far exceeding anything that South Africa has at its disposal. The United States is the world’s strongest and richest country, yet it has failed to address its illegal drug trade.

If the United States, with its FBI, DEA and host of other alphabet soup government departments and agencies all with budgets that far exceed South Africa’s total policing budget, cannot stop the scourge of drug gangs, how can South Africa expect to? Even the DA will not be able to sort out SAPS sufficiently to make a dent in the trade.

There is only one way to remove the drug trade as a source of revenue for these violent gangs: legalise it. Decriminalise and legalise drugs. The demand isn’t going away. We can only make rehab and treatment centres available for those few individuals who want to escape addiction. It is a utopian dream to believe that we can cure every junkie of addiction.

We should rather focus on eliminating the most dangerous aspect of drugs – the gangs they fund.

Legalising drugs will allow professional and powerful companies to takeover production and distribution. With consumer protection, drug-users will no longer be under risk of toxic additives to their fix. Drug-users currently have no legal recourse if an inferior product almost kills them. But legal enterprises will need to ensure that their quality is up to standard.

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Large companies can also beat out illicit production, thereby lowering the price of these drugs and pushing the gangs out of the market. As the gangs lose market share, they will no longer be able to purchase as many weapons, and the incentive to wage turf wars will lessen.

Legitimising the drug-trade not only provides protection for consumers while shoving gangs out of the market, it also may provide a lucrative tax revenue stream. Ideally, all the money that a tax on drugs generates should go towards funding rehabilitation and law enforcement.

Gangsterism is a scourge that infests all aspects of South African society. The sooner we reduce the incentives for these gangs to operate, the sooner they will collapse. And the best way to do that is to end this irrational criminalisation of drugs and strip the criminals of their enterprise.