Just quickly, your “political turn” contra Loury’s point is much appreciated, brutha.

As you noted a few days ago PSA’s in the form of rap videos and adages like ‘man up’ and ‘be a good father’ produce little tangible results. Legalizing drugs, however, would be a major step toward ameliorating and probably reversing the crisis.

For the last 30 years we’ve lived with a modern variant of unbridled Dickensian capitalism in the form of the drug industry. Like the slave trade of old families have been left in ruins and dead corpses litter the streets. Children are employed in the trade and the drug overlords have formed there own rules and methods attended by violence to regulate their commerce. The rest of us live under the caprice of their bullets.

Why not legalize drug trafficking the way we do gambling? It’s not perfect but surely it can’t be worse and is worth the effort. Licensure by the state would remove the need for overt violence to acquire and maintain territory. This would be undergirded by the ability to use organs of the state to settle disputes rather than street justice.

Free market proponents like Cobb who advocate for small businesses and midlevel service industries should welcome the addition of a new vehicle for acquiring wealth. Like Koreans in the ethnic beauty supply industry blacks could organize themselves into a powerful but legal cartel.

Low income predominantly black urban locales would have the disproportionate share of these ‘free trade’ zones. Unfortunately, I see no other way. Affluent white communities will resort to the ‘not in my backyard’ arguement and prevent a fair distribution of these zones into their communities. But residential considerations would be taken into account the way they are with any business.

Negotiations would include the distribution of revenues from the taxation of drugs to favor those areas which encompass these zones. Like tobacco and alcohol sales of narcotics would be limited to adults. Violators would suffer heavy fines and eventual felonies that would lead to forfeiture of license and loss of livelihood.

The state would heavily tax narcotics the way it does cigarettes. This combined with PSA’s and laws limiting sales to adults would provide a disincentive to minors becoming consumers. Again, not perfect but better than what we have now.

There will always be a hardcore segment similar to alcoholics and gambling addicts who pose a hazard. The healthcare and legal system would deal with them depending on the circumstances and nature of the offense. But we can’t let such persons determine how we respond and accomodate an industry that serves a need which can’t be eradicated.

This would go further than pithy admonitions and Afrocentric rituals to maintain family integrity.