Content area
Full text
Thornton, Mark, The Economics of Prohibition, Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, 1991, 184 pp., $35.00 ($15.95 paper).
In the beginning of his book, The Economics of Prohibition, Mark Thornton states that there is no unanimous opinion among economists on the issue of prohibitions, especially regarding drugs. He claims economists who specialize in monetary theory, public finance, and who work in the private sector are more likely to support decriminalization, while specialists in business administration and economists in government are more likely to support prohibition. Although these may seem somewhat sweeping claims, they have some substance. I am a government economist, and I favor the prohibition of drugs. Thornton then claims that in the remainder of his book he will prove to the reader that prohibitions are inferior to free market solutions and should be repealed. However, after reading his book, I was not converted to Thornton's philosophy. I still favor drug prohibition. This is not to say Thornton's book is not worth reading for those interested in the problem of drugs in the United States. It is interesting, insightful, and contains many entertaining stories on past prohibitions. However, it also has serious gaps.
In the first chapter, Thornton traces the history of the economics profession's work regarding prohibitions. This history begins with Simon Patten, one of the founders of the American Economic Association and one of its early presidents. Patten, in his writings, argued that alcohol prohibition would enhance the evolutionary competition of the United States. As temperate societies outproduce nontemperate societies, eventually causing nontemperate societies to falter, alcohol prohibition just speeds up this process. The economics of prohibition literature is surveyed through the Chicago school, best represented by the work of George Stigler and Gary...