• Our assumption that the prohibition results in a doubling of the product's price is extremely conservative, for in practice narcotics enforcement routinely results in prices estimated to exceed free-market rates a hundredfold or more. What if the buyers do not possess the requisite funds to meet these skyrocketing prices? If prices rise to the point where they cannot be paid by the physically addicted from wealth accumulated by normal market means, they will be driven to bring aggression against others to acquire the additional necessary money. This response is highly predictable, not only because of the intensity of their addiction, but also because any inhibitions about operating outside the law are likely to have already been overcome when they entered the black market. What makes the resulting wave of robberies, burglaries, and thefts virtually inevitable, it should be clear from this analysis, is not the debilitating nature of the addictive product or the psychological predispositions of its users, but the government's prohibition policy.

In summary, prohibitions against trade of addictive products do not significantly deter users from consuming those products, but greatly increase the exposure of third parties to criminal aggression. The extent to which such innocent persons will be victimized depends on the degree of escalation of black-market prices, which in turn reflects the zeal with which the prohibitions are enforced. Narcotics enforcement, as we shall see in Section 5, also has momentous consequences for the basic nature of a society and its political system.     

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