“A good case can be made that marijuana prohibition costs too much — in money, but also in ruined lives and harm done to society,” writes Alternet’s Bruce Mirkin. A Harvard economist’s study — that will be endorsed by the 92-year-old Milton Friedman and over 500 other economists — finds that “replacing prohibition with regulation would save $7.7 billion annually” in enforcement costs. Sales taxes could yield $2.4 to $6.2 billion. A billion here … a billion there … Adding up prohibition savings and revenues, Mirkin estimates in three years we’d have the $30 billion to secure thousands of Soviet-era “loose nukes.”
Legalization of drugs, and the benefits incurred, makes too much sense for anyone to ever consider it. Think of the damage it would do to the prison industry, the weapons industry…hell, the Republican Party. There would be no point to their “tough on crime” rhetoric because crime would have a huge drop.
But it will take a major PR campaign to convince people that legalizing drugs will not lead to the destruction of the earth. In fact, legalization will probably prevent it. Can you imagine Junior launching a nuclear war if he’s been smoking weed? He’d probably do nothing except laugh and eat Doritos.
On the savings issue:
Most government savings never wind up saving a dime. Why? If a government agency doesn’t spend all the money appropriated to them in any given year, they have to return the money. They never do. They’d rather buy a 200 year supply of $700 staplers than set a bad precedent like returning funds to the general fund.
But decriminalization is different. You save money all over the place, so you can appropriate less money in the first place. Less money for the DEA, less money for the Coast Guard, less money for courts and prisons and law enforecement.
The only problem is that, as Sibel Edmonds said (paraphrasing), “A lot of very important elected officials would be out a lot of money.” But since she can’t talk, we’ll never know which politicians she is referring to.
My money’s on Brownback.
We have the $30 billion now — that is a small down payment on the private accounts financing that Bush would spend on SS if we let him — so what makes you think any savings would be used to secure “loose nukes.”
Money arguments like this don’t persuade me. The “saved” $30 billion might as well be used to finance a space weapons system, a war in Syria or God knows what.
Just stop after “we could save $30 billion.”
I think he was using that merely as an example of what could be done with the savings from prohibition enforcement + tax revenues.
No doubt.
But anyone who wants to make Marijuana legal — not one of my priorities — won’t win the day with $$ arguments. INMHO, of course.
started by focusing on the absurdity of a tea law. I hope one day we acquire the courage and common sense to make history repeat itself.
Unfortunately our government seems to be going in the opposite direction from legalizing or decriminalizing. HR 1528, introduced by the House Judiciary Chairman, would mandate prison sentences of up to 10 years for anyone who knows about a friend or neighbor using illegal drugs but doesn’t report it to the police within 24 hours. Is this the direction we want to go?
There’s been very little publicity about this.
This is sad to say but its a true story from my own life.
I was in 9th grade, probably about 14 years old, and I was in the school library working on a project about “drugs” with a classmate, a young woman I still remember very well only because of this incident. Her name was Jane Black. And while I was industriously writing about why “drugs” should remain illegal, she asked me why alcohol was legal. What was the difference, she asked me, in its effects? In its deleterious influence on health, morals and society?
And I remember sitting there open-mouthed because I literally could not find an answer. It seemed like there should be one, but I couldn’t find it in my “memetic” cultural databank.
Years later and much more well-read on the subject, of course I know now there is no logical difference between alcohol and “drugs”. Logically they are exactly the same – some people become fiercely addicted to them and break laws and engage in violent and/or criminal behavior under their influence and some people have no appeal for them and others use them occasionally in a non-harmful way and sometimes even beneficial or therapeutic way. To paraphrase the NRA, it’s not “drugs who commit crimes and kill people, it’s people who commit crimes and kill people”.
Working for the po-po as I did, I can say WAY more than half of all violent crimes were committed under the influence of illegal narcotics and/or alcohol. Way more than half of rapes against adults were committed when the victim and the perpetrator were under the influence of illegal narcotics and/or alcohol. I’ve spoken to several murderers who I truly believe did not even remember their crimes simply because they were too high/drunk at the time.
Outlawing “drugs” is like outlawing “abortion”, it does nothing to prevent the phenonomenon, just makes it ten times more expensive and risky to the average person (rich people of course always get their hands on anything they want relatively risk-free). Simply put, modern societies are going to use drugs and are going to have abortions – the question is what to do about it?
Some countries like the Netherlands are forward thinking enough to simply legalize it. Others like Spain (and Switzerland I believe, could be wrong) have centers where people can consume drugs without fear of prosecution and under the supervision of a physician.
Others, like the Talibanesque United States, try to outlaw it with an iron fist. Yet look at Saudi Arabia, where drug possession is punishable by death and the conviction rate is +99%. Does it stop drug use or drug sales? No. So all the “milder” methods used by the US will never stop it either.
Instead of talking about the money legalization would provide (which whomever said this was an ineffective sales pitch, you’re right), lets talk about who profits off the prohibition of drugs. And frankly ladies and gentlemen, its the entire American economy which profits, which makes each of us guilty by association:
And so on and so forth. It’s harder to get state-by-state totals, but over half of all prisoners in the federal system are there for drug offenses.
Americans will never adopt any major new cultural changes based on love for their neighbors or saving money – they’ll only do it when they have a new scapegoat to hate. Sad to say but I think that’s the truth… and hating the inmates right now is easier because nobody is showing the Middle Americans how to hate the politicians and profiteers off the prison/parole trade.
Pax