We used to talk about forcing women into coat-hanger abortions, just as we used to talk about stemming the flow of alcohol or cocaine across the border. Likewise, we used to think that we were going to put up metal detectors and at least stop the worst of the mass shooting rampages at the perimeter (ignoring that the perimeter often is the juiciest target).
Now technological developments have reduced our effective scope of action:
- Abortion pills readily are available
- Fentanyl and even stronger opioid enhancers are small and portable
- USB thumb drives
- 3-D printed gun parts reduce the signature of pistol-size firearms, even when assembled (never mind disassembly)
The customs in any country that has a significant amount of cross-border human or cargo traffic has no means either to search every person, or every cargo shipment, to the level that is needed to detect such contraband, at an economic price. Even that assumes that the detection methods actually would work: for example, thumb drive memory chips can be pasted onto a motherboard; good luck trying to scan and detect that modification.
Now, the obvious counter-point is, yes the cross-border threat clearly obsoletes, but what happens if I close my borders, or I have longer quarantines? Do I have practical means, compatible with some semi-free society, to get me back to a place where my policy can interdict or prevent the manufacture of 50% or more of the contraband?
This is what you would have to do to limit/stop the internal manufacture and delivery:
- Delete the information like blueprints, formulas, etc. Many formulas and instructions aren’t that complicated and could be memorized. So you are going to have to arrest and otherwise deter all the existing manufacturers as your first step. Moreover, you will have to install scanning software on almost every device (not just PCs and cellphones) to identify the forbidden information. Taking the step of having the government scan every file on every device all the time is a gross violation of a free society.
- Limit/control the supply of materials. Whether this is feasible depends on the specific drug or device. For example, fentanyl is an organic molecule, therefore you have to have tight controls on a large number of chemical supplies and tight registration and inspection of chemical facilities, e.g. every high school lab. For 3-D printed gun parts, your only option is to install scanning on every printer (see previous notes about information) as you have no practical means to control the supply of raw material. Banning alcohol is a joke, as you’re not going to control the supply of grapes or other precursors unless you ban their cultivation – which any basement marijuana grower can tell you, isn’t gonna work unless there is some energy input (e.g. heat lamps) or other signature you can track with a mass scan.
- Sting operations and other interdictions of the distribution channels. Far and away this will be the most effective means and most compatible with a free society, but it’s only applicable for contraband that has specialized manufacturing facilities, and with interactions that occur infrequently. For example, alcohol easily is home manufactured, while the exchange of thumb drives can occur via social interactions that aren’t so easily stingable (e.g. free distribution). Of these categories discussed, abortion pills are by far the most suited to sting, as they involve random young women doing things they don’t ordinarily do, leveraging networks they likely don’t have or know they have. On the other hand, the widespread acceptance and practice of abortion in the society means that these networks likely already are pervasive, so you’re going to have to put a lot of effort in to break them up.
So the answer is “maybe”, but only for certain types of contraband and likely at a high level of effort. Probably not worthwhile, but there may be situations where you might have a positive cost-benefit.
There also are the approaches that of directly assess the individuals’ contraband status:
- Forced monthly pregnancy tests
- Stop and frisk
- Random home and vehicle searches
and we recognize these particular means, at the frequency that would be required to get to a 50% benchmark, as incompatible with a free society.