If you still doubt that the war on drugs has completely warped American law enforcement priorities, look at Camden, New Jersey, poorest city in the state and second most dangerous city in the US. Last month, Camden laid off nearly half its police force – and raised taxes by 23% – in a desperate attempt to plug a few budget holes.

Camden's police chief, Scott Thomson, said his reduced force lacks the manpower to investigate every crime in the city, so cops will no longer respond to calls about vandalism, petty theft or car accidents that don't cause injuries or traffic jams. (Incidentally, convincing auto insurance companies to pay accident claims without a police report isn't easy; good luck to Camden's drivers with that.) Instead, cops will focus on more serious problems like "homicide, gun violence and drug dealing". Murder and violence – with guns or without – definitely warrant police notice, but drug dealing? Camden police keep cracking down on it, even as they let vandals and petty thieves operate at will; a police adviser from Newark suggested Camden ask for DEA assistance to bulk up its narcotics squad.

Of course, Camden-style drug dealing is much scarier than in the suburbs; dealers clutter the streets rather than sell from behind discreetly closed doors. It's easy to see why residents would support a crackdown, with their children walking through open-air drug markets on their way to school. But alcohol's as bad for kids as any illicit drug, yet even in America's most crime-afflicted cities, like Camden, it isn't much of a problem.

Jack Cole, a retired undercover narcotics officer who now belongs to Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, said of some high school students he'd once investigated: "None of them were 21 years old but they could, and did, sell me any kind of illegal drugs you can name. However, they often came up to me and said, 'Hey Jack, we're thirsty – will you go into the liquor store and buy us some beer? We can't buy beer.' They could get all the illegal drugs they wanted but couldn't buy beer. How could that be?"

No mystery: beer comes from legal retailers who'll lose their liquor licence if they sell to anyone underage. Drug dealers feel no such compunction. And for all the very real problems excessive alcohol use can cause, that's not what's fuelling street violence in Camden. When distillers and brewmasters have disputes with their rivals, no innocents ever die in the crossfire – because there isn't any crossfire, since the owners of legal businesses can settle their disputes in court. Camden's drug dealers, on the other hand, fight their turf wars in the streets.

Unfortunately, the legal, licensed alcohol sellers in Camden and everywhere else are bound to go bankrupt any day now. Their business model doesn't work – at least, not according to Hillary Clinton. In an interview with the Mexican media last week, our illustrious secretary of state dismissed the idea that legalisation might reduce Mexico's drug-war violence. "I don't think that will work. I mean, I hear the same debate. I hear it in my country. It is not likely to work. There is just too much money in it."

Were Clinton alive and politicking during Prohibition, would she have also dismissed the eventual solution to the Mob violence that terrorised Chicago in the 1920s? "Legalising alcohol is not likely to work. There is just too much money in it."

Fortunately, for Clinton, she can afford to live in places much nicer and safer than Camden or Ciudad Juárez. She can afford to ignore the consequences of what she's endorsing. The slum-dwellers of the most violent cities in North America cannot. If you live in Camden, feel free to call the cops if your neighbour's smoking illicit cigarettes, but if your neighbour merely spray-paints your front door or steals the knocker off it, don't bother. The over-stretched cops have more important things to attend to.