Journal Article

Dynamics of Intervention in the War on Drugs: The Buildup to the Harrison Act of 1914

Redford, Audrey, Powell, Benjamin

2016

Overview

[...]as Mises states, \"interventionism is not an economic system ... it is not a method which enables people to achieve their aims\" ([1940] 1998, 78). Because information is dispersed across the economy often in the form of tacit knowledge (Hayek 1945), policy makers cannot fully anticipate, unless they are omniscient, how the changed information and incentives of market participants will ripple through the market and create secondary consequences that policy makers consider undesirable. [...]nothing was done to correct for the information problem created by forced labeling under the Pure Food and Drug Act. Because these newly labeled drugs were deemed dangerous and were now relatively more expensive, if not banned entirely, as heroin was by 1924, experimentation with other, previously less-utilized or unknown substances became popular, in particular marijuana, which in turn led to the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937.

• Publisher: Independent Institute
• Subject: 19th century / Analysis / Drug control / Drug policy / Drugs / Economic systems / Entrepreneurs / Evolution / Experiments / Food / Government intervention / Heroin / Imports / Incentives / Information / Intervention / Intervention (Federal government) / Labeling / Laws, regulations and rules / Marijuana / Markets / Military intervention / Morphine / Narcotic dependence / Narcotic drugs / Narcotics / Narcotics, Control of / Opiates / Opium / Perceptions / Policy making / Secularism / State government / Tacit knowledge / Tariffs / Taxation