Calls for the drug legalization from unexpected places
Milton Friedman: Legalize It!
The Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), a Washington, D.C., group advocating the review and liberalization of marijuana laws, largely paid for the elaboration of a report on the costs of marijuana prohibition and the potential revenue gains from the U.S. government instead legalizing it and taxing its sale. "The Budgetary Implications of Marijuana Prohibition," report was written by Jeffrey A. Miron, a professor at Harvard, and endorsed by a list headed by Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman including more than 500 U.S. economists, top specialists from Cornell, Stanford and Yale universities among others. The report says, that ending prohibition enforcement would save $7.7 billion in combined state and federal spending, while taxation would yield up to $6.2 billion a year.
"The fact that marijuana prohibition has these budgetary impacts does not by itself mean prohibition is bad policy," the economists wrote. "Existing evidence, however, suggests prohibition has minimal benefits and may itself cause substantial harm. We therefore urge the country to commence an open and honest debate about marijuana prohibition. We believe such a debate will favor a regime in which marijuana is legal but taxed and regulated like other goods. At a minimum, this debate will force advocates of current policy to show that prohibition has benefits sufficient to justify the cost to taxpayers, foregone tax revenues, and numerous ancillary consequences that result from marijuana prohibition."
"There is no logical basis for the prohibition of marijuana," says Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize for economics in 1976. "$7.7 billion is a lot of money, but that is one of the lesser evils. Our failure to successfully enforce these laws is responsible for the deaths of thousands of people in Colombia. I haven’t even included the harm to young people. It’s absolutely disgraceful to think of picking up a 22-year-old for smoking pot. More disgraceful is the denial of marijuana for medical purposes."
According the report, if the laws change, large beneficiaries might include large agricultural groups like as potential growers or distributors and liquor businesses, which understand the distribution of intoxicants. Surprisingly, home gardening centers would not particularly benefit, according to the report, which projects that few people would grow their own marijuana, the same way few people distill whiskey at home. Canada’s large-scale domestic marijuana growing industry suggests otherwise, however.
"I’ve long been in favor of legalizing all drugs," says Friedman, "but not because of the standard libertarian arguments for unrestricted personal freedom. "Look at the factual consequences: The harm done and the corruption created by these laws...the costs are one of the lesser evils."
The Marijuana Policy Project executive director Rob Kampia commented the report: "As Milton Friedman and over 500 economists have now said, it’s time for a serious debate about whether marijuana prohibition makes any sense. We know that prohibition hasn’t kept marijuana away from kids, since year after year 85% of high school seniors tell government survey-takers that marijuana is ’easy to get.’ Conservatives, especially, are beginning to ask whether we’re getting our money’s worth or simply throwing away billions of tax dollars that might be used to protect America from real threats."
Eroding civil liberties, corroding foreign policy
This kind of economic assessment is no breaking news because already in 2001, Peter Reuter, an economist at the University of Maryland, made a comprehensive study of illegal drugs (Drug War Heresies), which results were published in The Economist. Apart from financial aspects of the drug prohibition, he was putting forward its ominous impact not only on the American society, but also equally on the US relations to other countries and their population. He said, that in the United States have the world’s most expensive drugs policy, absorbing $35 billion-40 billion a year of taxpayers’ cash. It has eroded civil liberties, locked up unprecedented numbers of young blacks and Hispanics, and corroded foreign policy. Americans probably consume more drugs per head, especially cocaine and amphetamines, than most other countries. In 2000, almost a third of Americans over 12 years old admitted to having tried drugs at some point, almost one in ten.
In addition, the effects of America’s misdirected policies spill across the world. Other rich countries that try to change their policies meet fierce American resistance; poor countries that ship drugs come (as Latin American experience shows) under huge pressure to prevent the trade, whatever the cost to civil liberties or the environment.
The study also suggested that the pattern of drug consumption is altering, arguably for the better. Casual use seems to have fallen; heavy use has stabilized. “The total population of drug users has been pretty stable since the late 1980s,” said Mr. Reuter. He suggested that in the rich countries, the drugs that increasingly attract young users were those that are typically taken sporadically, not continuously: cannabis, ecstasy, amphetamines and cocaine. In that sense, they are more like alcohol than tobacco: users may binge one or two nights a week or indulge every so often with friends, but most do not crave a dose every day, year in, year out, as smokers generally do. That does not mean that these drugs are harmless, but it should raise questions about whether current policies are still appropriate.
Retailers: Retalize It!
Pro-legalization voices are rising within the U.S. retailer community, too. In a recent online poll 71% of retail industry professionals supported the legalization of marijuana. "From a purely practical standpoint, many are now convinced that legalizing marijuana in the US would be of great benefit to the economy, particularly to retail businesses, and would alleviate other social problems and injustices," RetailWire.com noted in a news release on the poll results titled "Retail-ize It!"
Pro-legalization neocons
In June 2004, Canadian neoconservative Fraser Institute elaborated a study called "Marijuana Growth in British Columbia". The study raised several issues that have the cumulative effect of suggesting that in the long term, the prohibition on marijuana cannot be sustained with the present technology of production and enforcement. To anyone with even a passing acquaintance with modern history, it is apparent that we are reliving the experience of alcohol prohibition of the early years of the last century. It said, that the value of production of marijuana was between 1 percent and 2.8 percent of British Columbia’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) that was roughly $130 billion in 2000. "We would still grow marijuana in ’flower pots’ except now it would be in the open and taxed like any other commodity at the retail level," said the researchers. "Removing the prohibition on marijuana production would permit society to replace today’s gift of revenue to organized crime with (at the very least) an additional source of revenue for government coffers. Unless we wish to continue to transfer these billions from this lucrative endeavor to organized crime, this policy should be considered."
War on Drugs leads to higher levels of crime
The U. S. journal Social Science Quarterly recently published the results of a study of the adverse impact of drug arrests on rates of non-drug crimes. Authors found: "Drug enforcement is positively associated with higher levels of both violent and property crime. ... These results are consistent with the view that non-drug crime rates may rise because limited police resources are diverted from [violent and/or property] crimes when drug arrests are given a higher priority, users must finance higher-priced purchases when supplies decline, and sellers pursue alternate crimes when the risk of arrest increases." It was also noted that arrests for marijuana violations were associated with an increase in larcenies, but not other non-drug crimes.
Authors concluded, "The empirical findings raise serious questions about the effectiveness of drug enforcement as a crime-control measure and suggest that significant social costs may arise from existing approaches to drug control."
Cops against drug prohibition
Even in the ranks of the U. S. law enforcement attitudes to government’s War on Drugs are changing. In 2002, current and former members of law enforcement who support drug regulation rather than prohibition founded an international nonprofit educational organization called LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition). In two years the organization had grown from five founders to a membership of over 2,000, with 85 speakers, living in the United States and in 7 other countries. All LEAP speakers are former drug-warriors-police, parole, probation and corrections officers, judges, and prosecutors. LEAP has members and supporters across the United States and in forty-five other countries, which is fitting since U.S. drug policy has ramifications that affect the entire world.
The mission of LEAP is to reduce the multitude of harms resulting from fighting the war on drugs and to lessen the incidence of death, disease, crime, and addiction by ultimately ending drug prohibition. The LEAP is convinced that in order to fight illegal drugs efficiently, they need to be at first legalized and the profits of their production and sale excluded from the black market. They believe that drugs should be available in small quantities for personal consumption to every adult person wishing to use them. They suggest that their legalization would radically weaken the power of organized crime and terrorist organizations, for which the drugs represent a bottomless source of profit.
LEAP presents to national and international law-enforcement conventions, but it equally targets civic, professional, educational, and religious organizations, as well as public forums civic groups like Chambers of Commerce, Rotaries, Lions and Kiwanis Clubs, etc. The people in these organizations are conservatives who mostly agree with the drug-warriors that we must continue the war on drugs at any cost. After more than 900 presentations where LEAP calls for the government to “end prohibition and legalize all drugs” they have discovered that the vast majority of participants in those audiences agree with their proposal. Even more amazing is that at national and international law-enforcement conventions, of those to whom they speak with at their exhibit booth, 6% want to continue the war on drugs, 14% are undecided, and 80% agree with LEAP that we must end drug prohibition.
The LEAP’s proposal of drug legalization consists of four steps:
1. Legalize all drugs.
2. Have the federal government produce the drugs and control their quality.
3. Have the government distribute free maintenance doses of any drugs to any adults who choose to continue to use them.
4. Reallocating those saved billions of dollars to programs for treating the addictions of ill citizens and proactively working to convince others not to use drugs.
Bushka Bryndova
Sources:
Report "The Budgetary Implications of Marijuana Prohibition"
Stumbling in the dark, The Economist
Study "Drug War Heresies", review of the book
Online poll of retail industry professionals on the legalization of marijuana
Study "Marijuana Growth in British Columbia", Fraser Institute
Drug Enforcement and Crime: Recent Evidence from New York State, Social Science Quarterly
