Defending the Truth

This is more money than I had foreseen!

Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman joined 500 respected economists last week in endorsing a Harvard University study that said federal and state governments could realize a $14 billion gain by regulating and taxing marijuana as a legal product.


Whole article:

http://www.detnews.com/2005/editoria...A15-212350.htm

Faced with two bad choices, I'd druther kids celebrate their 21st birthdays with a bag of pot than by pouring 21 shots of cheap liquor down their gullets.

Again, both are poor choices. But a poor choice made with alcohol is far more lethal than one made with marijuana.

Binge drinking, drunken driving and booze-induced recklessness continue to leave empty seats in college and high school classrooms.

Marijuana has its own set of negatives, but it is rarely directly connected to a teen death.

And yet we treat marijuana as public enemy No. 1 when it comes to children. At the same time, we welcome a stream of beer commercials into our homes and don't blink when liquor companies sponsor spring break blowouts.

Parents who roll their eyes and giggle when young Johnny stumbles home tipsy go into complete despair when they find a baggie in a dresser drawer.

It's a very expensive hypocrisy. State and federal governments spend $8 billion a year on the war on marijuana.

The latest education campaign will spend another $125 million to convince children that pot will rot their brains.

We should save our money. Teen pot use is as cyclical as the auto industry. Some decades it goes up, some it goes down, with no correlation to spending on anti-drug programs.

Nearly 40 percent of teens say they've tried marijuana, the same percentage as the general population. While hopefully teens understand that pot isn't good for them, they know first-hand that it is no more harmful -- and perhaps less so -- than loading up on vodka.

Trying to convince them otherwise will just make them ignore warnings about the more dangerous drugs.

Before dismissing me as a leftover '60s pothead, let me say I have no interest in marijuana, even if it were legal.

But I am a taxpayer who expects a return on his investment. The drug war is delivering none.

Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman joined 500 respected economists last week in endorsing a Harvard University study that said federal and state governments could realize a $14 billion gain by regulating and taxing marijuana as a legal product.

There is a growing acceptance that this war is not only unwinnable, it is irrational.

Despite spending $35 billion a year to battle illegal narcotics, drug use here is about the same as in the European countries with more liberal drug laws.

But still we fight on. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court handed a major victory to drug warriors by declaring federal authorities can prosecute those who grow and use marijuana for medical purposes.

The ruling fits the national ideology that in the name of the drug war, the Constitution can be tossed on the garbage heap.

But nothing will keep desperate people from seeking relief, or teens from experimenting.

The war against pot is lost.

Surrendering isn't a defeat. It simply ends our national hypocrisy and leaves more money for more pressing battles.

http://www.forbes.com/2005/06/02/cz_...pot_print.html


Milton Friedman: Legalize It!
Quentin Hardy, 06.02.05, 12:01 AM ET

A founding father of the Reagan Revolution has put his John Hancock on a pro-pot report.

Milton Friedman leads a list of more than 500 economists from around the U.S. who today will publicly endorse a Harvard University economist's report on the costs of marijuana prohibition and the potential revenue gains from the U.S. government instead legalizing it and taxing its sale. Ending prohibition enforcement would save $7.7 billion in combined state and federal spending, the report says, while taxation would yield up to $6.2 billion a year.

The report, "The Budgetary Implications of Marijuana Prohibition," (available at www.prohibitioncosts.org) was written by Jeffrey A. Miron, a professor at Harvard , and largely paid for by the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), a Washington, D.C., group advocating the review and liberalization of marijuana laws.

At times the report uses some debatable assumptions: For instance, Miron assumes a single figure for every type of arrest, for example, but the average pot bust is likely cheaper than bringing in a murder or kidnapping suspect. Friedman and other economists, however, say the overall work is some of the best yet done on the costs of the war on marijuana.

At 92, Friedman is revered as one of the great champions of free-market capitalism during the years of U.S. rivalry with Communism. He is also passionate about the need to legalize marijuana, among other drugs, for both financial and moral reasons.

"There is no logical basis for the prohibition of marijuana," the economist says, "$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."

Securing the signatures of Friedman, along with economists from Cornell, Stanford and Yale universities, among others, is a coup for the MPP, a group largely interested in widening and publicizing debate over the usefulness of laws against pot.

If the laws change, large beneficiaries might include large agricultural groups like Archer Daniels Midland (nyse: ADM - news - people ) and ConAgra Foods (nyse: CAG - news - people ) as potential growers or distributors and liquor businesses like Constellation Brands (nyse: STZ - news - people ) and Allied Domecq (nyse: AED - news - people ), which understand the distribution of intoxicants. Surprisingly, Home Depot (nyse: HD - news - people ) and other 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 (see "Inside Dope") suggests otherwise, however.

The report will likely not sway all minds. The White House Office of Drug Control Policy recently published an analysis of marijuana incarceration that states that "most people in prison for marijuana are violent criminals, repeat offenders, traffickers or all of the above." The office declined to comment on the marijuana economics study, however, without first analyzing the study's methodology.

Friedman's advocacy on the issue is limited--the nonagenarian prefers to write these days on the need for school choice, calling U.S. literacy levels "absolutely criminal...only sustained because of the power of the teachers' unions." Yet his thinking on legalizing drugs extends well past any MPP debate or the kind of liberalization favored by most advocates.

"I've long been in favor of legalizing all drugs," he says, 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."

Not that a man of his years expects reason to triumph. Any added revenues from taxing legal marijuana would almost certainly be more than spent, by this or any other Congress.

"Deficits are the only thing that keeps this Congress from spending more" says Friedman. "Republicans are no different from Democrats. Spending is the easiest way to buy votes." A sober assessment indeed.

That's an awesome and very interesting article. I think it says a lot. I know that at least a large part of our generation support legalization as well. I think with the way opinions have grown and continue to grow, change may come, but when is hard to tell. I like the line about little Johnny. It's funny, but also true. I know plenty of parents and other adults that have such a loose attitude towards alcohol and drinking, yet towards marijuana it's totally different. Alcohol is clearly the more dangerous drug. It doesn't make sense.

Was listening to Jay Severin on FM Talk, and he is a moderate conservative of which I listen to daily because I think he makes sense the most. He believes marijuana should be legalized because people are able to go the doctors and easily get Oxycoton, vicotin, or other drugs to put into your body. He stated their should be no law preventing myself from using marijuana considering how easy it is for people to get other drugs that have similar, maybe worse side-effects. Also the tax thing he brought up is another plus. Probably everything hevusa has said, Severin would agree with.

Jay Severin sounds interesting. Too bad they don't seem to cast their show online (http://www.wtkk.com/showdj.asp?DJID=5854) or I would have a listen.