>>898450You can't economically deter murder, which is done largely for non-economic reason. You can economically deter cocaine sale, it is either profitable or not profitable. The activity is economically deterred when it's not profitable. You would have a point if a large amount of local production in Ireland had driven down the price to the point that there's no point for organized crime to exist but it's factually not true. It's fair to say that 99.99% of cocaine physically present in Ireland is not locally produced. Growing the coca leaf requires a certain climate and Ireland doesn't have it. This is why its production is concentrated in certain parts of the world (pic related).
It is easily verifiable that there are several large cocaine-related gangs currently operating in Ireland which tragically have not been deterred. Cocaine overdose have steadily increased in Ireland for the past few years. I'm quite willing to bet these people didn't overdose on the minimal local production. It is well possible that Ireland's controversial decision has done the opposite of deterring gang activity: legalizing possession makes it harder for police to track down drug dealers. There are several reports of gang violence increasing in activity
https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/07/europe/drogheda-gang-wars-ireland-drugs-intl/index.htmlhttps://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/irish-drug-trade-s-scale-and-severity-laid-bare-by-europol-1.4096051Why make an empty claim that surely the (minimal) local production affected gang profitability instead of actually looking at gang reports for data to see whether it increased or decreased?
