End drug and prostitution prohibitions

First, it is critical to draw the distinction between true externalities of drugs and prostitution and costs created by the prohibition. For example, many people claim that increased crime rates are a social cost of drug use. However, it is not clear that this is the case. Property crimes (such as theft) committed by drug users to finance their drug use are probably a result of the high price created by prohibition (estimates put some drug prices under prohibition at 20 times the free market lev