Posted on 05/10/2006 7:31:03 AM PDT by cryptical
America's war on drugs is actually a Raid on Taxpayers. The war costs an estimated $70 billion a year to prosecute, and the drugs keep pouring in. But while the War on Drugs may have failed its official mission, it is a great success as a job-creation program. Thousands of drug agents, police, detectives, prosecutors, judges, anti-drug activists, prison guards and their support staffs can thank the program for their daily bread and health benefits.
The American people are clearly not ready to decriminalize cocaine, heroine or other hard drugs, but they're well on their way to easing up on marijuana. A Zogby poll found that nearly half of Americans now want pot legal and regulated, like alcohol. Few buy into the "demon drug" propaganda anymore, and for a simple reason: Several countries have decriminalized marijuana with little effect on public health.
Americans could save a ton of money doing the same. The taxpayers spend almost $8 billion a year enforcing the ban on marijuana, according to a report by visiting Harvard economist Jeffrey A. Miron. State and local governments consume about $5 billion of the total.
The war on pot fills our jails. America arrests 755,000 people every year for marijuana infractions -- the vast majority for possession, not dealing. An estimated 80,000 people now sit behind bars on marijuana offenses.
The Bush administration stoutly supports the campaign against marijuana, which others think is crazy. Compare the Canadian and American approach to medical marijuana: The Canadian Postal Service delivers it right into the mailboxes of Canadian cancer patients. The U.S. Justice Department invades the patients' backyards and rips out cannabis plants, even those grown with a state's blessing.
The Bush administration isn't going to last forever, nor is the patience of Americans paying for and suffering under the ludicrous war on marijuana. Surely letting sick people smoke marijuana to ease their discomfort -- 11 states have approved such, including Rhode Island -- would be a good start for a more enlightened drug policy.
For the drug warriors, however, this toe in the water seems a foot in the door for eventual decriminalization of pot. That's understandable. Relaxing the rules on marijuana would greatly reduce the need for their services.
Remember the Supreme Court case two years ago, when Justice Stephen Breyer innocently suggested that the federal Food and Drug Administration be asked to rule on whether marijuana had an accepted medical use? Well, the FDA has just ruled. In a total lie, the FDA said that no scientific studies back the use of marijuana for medical purposes. Actually, the prestigious Institute of Medicine issued its findings in 1999 that marijuana helped patients for pain and for the relief of nausea and vomiting caused by chemotherapy.
The federal government "loves to ignore our report," John Benson, a professor of medicine at the University of Nebraska and co-chairman of the committee that wrote the Institute of Medicine" study, said after the FDA issued its "advisory."
The Drug Enforcement Administration, which feeds off the drug war, plays a big part in stopping this and all future efforts to reach educated opinions on marijuana. Lyle Craker, a University of Massachusetts authority on medicinal plants, wanted to grow marijuana for the purpose of evaluating its possible medical uses. The DEA said no, insisting that he use marijuana from a University of Mississippi lab. The DEA knows full well that the UMiss pot is low-quality and therefore useless for study.
The drug warriors' incentive to keep the game going is pretty obvious. But what's in it for taxpayers?
Miron's Harvard study looked beyond what the public pays to enforce the marijuana laws. It also investigated how much money would roll in if marijuana were legal and taxed like alcohol. The answer was over $6 billion in annual tax revenues. Do the math: If government stopped outlawing marijuana and started taxing it, its coffers would be $14 billion richer every year.
We could use that money. For example, $14 billion could pay for all the anti-terrorism port-security measures required in the Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2002.
More than 500 economists of every political stripe have endorsed the Miron study. Growing numbers of Americans are beginning to agree with them: The war against marijuana is an expensive failure -- and pointless, too.
Froma Harrop is a Journal editorial writer and syndicated columnist. She may be reached by e-mail at: fharrop@projo.com.
It makes no sense because you want to pretend that "manufacturers" ("Big Dope") and high taxers (no pun intended) won't see mj as a new revenue stream from which they can realize tremendous profits (and taxes) far in excess of anything they can get from booze. In other words, my comment made "no sense" because you are pipe dreaming reality as we know it (can you say, "gasoline tax") away (which is what "lotus eaters" will always do).
Of course, the same drug lords who control pot and other drugs today will find ways to run the bootlegged pot operation (meaning that the crime and violence associated with drug trafficking would continue, legalization proponents arguments to the contrary notwithstanding). What garbage. How much crime violence was associated with the alcohol trade after the 21st Amendment was ratified?
Refer to my statement above. When the price of "legal" dope goes sky high (as it inevitably will once corporate interests and the feds are involved), the gangs will be right back in the game. Reality may be "garbage" to you, but at some point you have to put down the pipe and face up to it.
If that were the case, then mj wouldn't be "regulated like alcohol", now would it.
When the price of "legal" dope goes sky high (as it inevitably will once corporate interests and the feds are involved), the gangs will be right back in the game.
Of course there would be a black market under a punitive tax regime, but you said "regulate like alcohol". Please pay attention and don't forget that.
Now, back up your unsupported claim that mj would be taxed to the point that the gangs would be right back in business.
pawdoggie: Talk about "irrationality". The day that (unfermented) wheat can give you a buzz or cause you to be cited for DUI, is the day that wheat and marijuana will be on the same plateau of "regulatability".
If you are saying that federal drug laws do not depend on Wickard, you are woefully uninformed:
"The case comes down to the claim that a locally cultivated product that is used domestically rather than sold on the open market is not subject to federal regulation. Given the CSA's findings and the undisputed magnitude of the commercial market for marijuana, Wickard and its progeny foreclose that claim."
--Justice Stevens in Raich
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2006/justice.html
How in the world can $8 billion be spent on enforcing merely the marijuana ban? Frankly, the article sounds like a bunch of left-wing propaganda to me.
No property may be seized unless the government has probable cause to believe that it is subject to forfeiture.(1) Forfeiture [however] is the biggest growth area in law enforcement partly because federal and local police agencies usually keep a large amount of the booty they seize.
Federal Judge Richard Arnold noted in 1992 that some observers were questioning "whether we are seeing fair and effective law enforcement or an insatiable appetite for a source for increased agency revenue." (2)
Modern drug forfeiture law dates from 1970, when Congress passed the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act. That Act included a civil forfeiture provision, 21 U.S.C. sec. 881, authorizing the government to seize and forfeit drugs, drug manufacturing and storage equipment, and conveyances used to transport drugs. This provision was intended to forestall the spread of drugs in a way criminal penalties could not: by striking at its economic roots. When criminal prosecution sends a dealer to jail a subordinate will most probably take his place, but seizing the means of production and other capital may shut down the trafficking business for good. In the 27 years since, the list of properties subject to forfeiture has greatly expanded, and the required connection to illegal drug activity has become ever more remote. Congress amended the forfeiture law to include proceeds traceable to drug transactions in 1978, added real property in 1984, and in 1986 promulgated a "substitute assets" law providing that property of an equal value may be forfeited in place of forfeitable assets that are no longer available. Today cash, bank accounts, jewelry, cars, boats, airplanes, businesses, houses and land are all fair game.(3)
...law enforcement agencies now rely on forfeitures to fund a significant part of their operations. The gross amounts are prodigious: By 1987 the Drug Enforcement Administration was effectively paying for itself, with seizures exceeding its annual budget.(99) Between 1985 and 1991, the Justice Department collected more than 1.5 billion in illegal assets;(100) in the next five years, the Justice Department almost doubled this intake, depositing $2.7 billion in its Asset Forfeiture Fund.(101) It appears that this forfeiture income is sometimes required to operate the Department, which has regularly exhorted its attorneys to make "every effort" to increase "forfeiture production" so as to avoid budget shortfalls.(102) Like concerns motivate state and local officials. A 1991 Justice Department memorandum observed that state and local law enforcement agencies were becoming increasingly dependent upon equitable sharing of forfeiture proceeds.(103) (As of 1994 the Department had transferred almost $1.4 billion in forfeited assets to these agencies.(104)) Similarly, a study of multijurisdictional drug task forces participating in the Byrne grant program found that these task forces had seized over $1 billion in assets between 1988 and 1992,(105) and that many of their commanders " expect to have to rely increasingly on asset forfeitures for future resources."(106)(4)
The Volusia County, Florida, sheriff's department set up a "forfeiture trap" to stop motorists traveling Interstate 95 and seized an average of over $5,000 a day from motorists between 1989 and 1992-over $8 million dollars total. (5) No doubt, a large part of this seizure was because as The Orlando Sentinel noted, "Deputies routinely said bills in denominations of $1, $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100 were suspicious because they are typical of what dealers carry."(6)
The Justice Department routinely gives monetary rewards to individuals who report information or make accusations that lead to a seizure. The forfeiture program thus turns many airline ticket agents into conspirators with the government, since anyone who pays cash for an airline ticket stands a chance of being reported as a suspected drug dealer or an accomplice to drug dealing.(7)
Willie Jones of Nashville was flying to Houston on February 27, 1991, to purchase plants for his landscaping business. The ticket clerk reported him to nearby Drug Enforcement Agency officers, who presumed Jones was a drug courier (partially because he was black, and paid cash for his ticket). DEA officers at the Nashville airport approached Jones, checked his identification, and asked permission to search him. Although Jones refused to grant permission, the officers searched him anyway and found $9,000 in cash. The DEA agents then announced that they were "detaining" the money. Jones observed: "They said I was going to buy drugs with it, that their dog sniffed it and said it had drugs on it." Jones never saw the dog. The officers didn't arrest Jones, but they kept the money. When Jones asked the officers for a receipt for his money, they handed him a receipt for an "undetermined amount of U.S. currency." Jones objected and asked the officers to count the money out, but the officers refused, claiming that such an action would violate DEA policy.(8)
Judge Wiseman concluded that the DEA officials' testimony on the seizure was "misleading," "unconvincing," and "inconsistent" and ordered the money returned - after a two-year legal battle. Jones observed: "I didn't know it was against the law for a 42-year-old black man to have money in his pocket."(9)
In Nueces County, Texas, Sheriff James Hickey used assets from a federal drug forfeiture fund to grant himself a retroactive $48,000 salary increase just before retirement ($400 a month for the previous ten years). The sheriff was indicted for embezzlement by a federal grand jury in August 1993.(10)
From 1985 to 1991, the number of federal seizures of property under asset forfeiture laws increased by 1500 percent-reaching a total of $644 million.(11)
State and local governments have also seized hundreds of millions of dollars of property in recent years. In California alone, more than $180 million worth of property has been forfeited since 1989 under a state forfeiture law.(12)
In Fort Lauderdale, Florida, police seized the $250,000 home of a dead man from his heirs who had cared for him while he was dying of cancer. A "confidential informant told police that [two years earlier] the owner ... took a $10,000 payment from drug dealers who used a dock at the house along a canal to unload cocaine. The informant can't recall the exact date, the boat's name or the dealers' names, and the government candidly says in its court brief it 'does not possess the facts necessary to be any more specific,' "(13)
A married couple in Ottsville, Pennsylvania, had their $250,000 home confiscated after police found marijuana plants inside the house; the couple and their three children were effectively evicted from their own home. District Attorney Gary Gambardella, who filed the motion to confiscate the home, observed: "People say that selling drugs is a victimless crime, but the children are the real losers here."(14)
Law enforcement officials are also seizing apartment buildings to punish the landlords for not eradicating drug dealing in the apartments. (If the same standard were applied to inner-city public housing projects, almost every public housing project in the country could be seized from the government; in 1993 Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke blamed maintenance problems at one public housing project on drug dealers who refused to let city workers enter the buildings.)(15)
The owner of a 36-unit apartment building in Milwaukee sought to placate the police by evicting ten tenants suspected of drug use, giving a master key to local beat cops, forwarding tips to the police, and hiring two security firms to patrol the building. The city still seized the building because, as Milwaukee city attorney David Stanosz declared, "Once a property develops a reputation as a place to buy drugs, the only way to fix that is to leave it totally vacant for a number of months. This landlord doesn't want to do that. The owner had encouraged the police to send undercover agents into the building - but the police claimed they were too short of officers.(16)
Legalizing drugs would be a great idea if but for the liberal entitlement mentality of the general populations governemnt coddling of society's failures through one government boondogle safety net after another. Given all the problems that alchohol causes in society, tradgedies that families have gone through and lives irrevocably wrecked because of it, and the billions of dollars in cost, the answer is to legalize everything? The government creates the very monsters I need to protect myself from, and then deprives me of the means to do so.
Idealism is great, except when its pie-in-the-sky utopian, then its just that: pie-in-the-sky. Anybody who thinks society would be better of with legalized drugs has been smoking too much of it already, or hasn't seen the evils of crack and meth addiction. What's next: legal prostitution? Why stop there? 1. Department of Justice, U.S.; Annual Report of the Department of Justice Asset Forfeiture Program 1991 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1992), p. 7.
2. U.S. v. Twelve Thousand, Three Hundred Ninety Dollars, 956 F. 2d 801, 808 (1992)
3. Blumenson, Eric and Nilsen, Nilsen; POLICING FOR PROFIT: THE DRUG WAR'S HIDDEN ECONOMIC AGENDA (Copyright 1997 by University of Chicago Law Review, all rights reserved) [http://www.fear.org/chicago.html], 1/14/97 revision; Part I para 5.
5. Brazil, Jeff and Berry, Steve; "Tainted cash or easy money?" Orlando Sentinel, various dates, 1992 (a series of articles winning them the 1993 Pulitzer Prize)
6. Bovard, James; Seizure Fever: The War on Property Rights (Reprinted with permission from The Freeman, a publication of The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., January 1996, Vol. 46, No. 1.) [http://www.libertyhaven.com/personalfreedomissues/freespeechorcivilliberties/seizurefever.html], para 24.
8. Willie Jones v. U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, 1993 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 5409 (April 23, 1993).
9. Scheider, Andrew and Flaherty, Mary Pat Flaherty; "Police Profit by Seizing Homes of Innocent," Pittsburgh Press, August 12, 1991.
10. "Sheriffs Own Pay Raise Leads to Indictment," AP, August 19, 1993.
11. Brief of the Institute for Justice in the case of U.S. vs. James Daniel Good Real Property, et al., No. 92-1180.
12. Webb, Gary "Police lobbying to save state asset forfeiture law," San Jose Mercury News i September 7, 1993.
13. Schneider, Andrew and Flaherty, Mary Pat; "With Sketchy Data, Government Seizes House From Man's Heirs," Pittsburgh Press, August 14, 1991.
14. Elser, Christopher; "Two Admit Growing in Marijuana at Home," Allentown (Pa.) Morning Call, March 16, 1995.
15. Pemberton, Mary; "Baltimore Public-Housing Tenants Begin a Rent Strike," AP, February 24, 1993.
16. Schneider, Andrew and Flaherty, Mary Pat; "Police Profit by Seizing Homes of Innocent."
There's nothing in the "substantial effects doctrine" about "buzz". Just ask Bob Stewart.
Refer to my statement above. When the price of "legal" dope goes sky high (as it inevitably will once corporate interests and the feds are involved), the gangs will be right back in the game. Reality may be "garbage" to you, but at some point you have to put down the pipe and face up to it.
Amen. That was the point I was trying to make about the original article, if legal cannabis were "regulated and taxed like alcohol"...prices would become prohibitive. But, instead of coming back at me with the (marginally more logical) "well, what about growing for private consumption?" argument, the Heads all wanted to convince me (and themselves) that dope would be selling for $5.00 a pack, like beer and cigarettes.
The government already is involved when it imposes a prohibition. It is utter nonsense to say that reasonable regulation and taxation would raise prices above black market prices. If you disagree, then explain why there is such a small black market in alcohol.
I can't even think of one example.
Here's one:
"The price of beer increased by more than 700 percent, and that of brandies increased by 433 percent, but spirit prices increased by only 270 percent,"
-http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-157.html
Alcohol is reasonably regulated and taxed. If mj were "regulated like alcohol", then it would also be reasonably regulated and taxed, and prices would not become prohibitive.
Are you thick headed, or simply giving a dishonest argument?
I could say "gasoline was once 20 cents a gallon, until the Federal and State governments realized what a cash cow gas was", but instead of making sense I'll play your game: No, I'm not thick-headed or simply dishonest, but YOU ARE! I can't help it if you're too stoned to see the brilliance of my logic!
You're one or the other. You said "regulate like alcohol", then you argue a position in which mj is not regulated like alcohol.
Okay, now I see what your objection may be: a. you are a literalist who takes "regulated like alcohol" to mean (literally) "taxed at exactly the same rate, per volume, as alcohol" (in which case the drug would be taxed at like 0.001 per spliff-based on weight) or, b. You are not being a literalist, but you are so trusting of corporations and government at all levels as to believe that they would never price or tax your drug of choice at an "unfair" rate vis a vis alcohol. Okay, accepting those two possibilities (for the sake of argument, or for the sake of ending the argument) I will CONCEDE YOUR POINT. Now, dream on, Rasta Man.
There were only two reasons than marijuana was prohibited in 1937, to protect the renewed alcoholic beverage industry from competition and to protect the tax revenue from alcohol sales from marijuana home growers who required much less capital to do so than the illegal brewers on whom they could concentrate law enforcement manpower.
I'm still looking for the "right to smoke dope" provision in the Constitution. It's probably right next to the "right to porno" clause in the 1st Amendment. As to "original intent", however, I think that back in 1798 America hanging porno poster outside your house or smoking a doobie on your front porch would not have commended you to your neighbors (assuming that they let you live, of course). BTW, they didn't have any "Megan's laws" back in post-Revolutionary America, either. They never thought anyone could be so perverse.
Funny how her War on Drugs article morphed into a war on marijuana article pretty quickly.
Yes, I've heard the Marxist tinfoil hat theory of why marijuana was outlawed. I've also heard that it was outlawed to keep Mexicans from seducing white girls. I'm not sure I believe that either, but given the "temper of the times", that sounds just as plausible.
"I'm still looking for the "right to smoke dope" provision in the Constitution. "
Amendment IX: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the PEOPLE.
Amendment X: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the PEOPLE.
Amendment X: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the PEOPLE.
And the Amendment that prohibits governments from the Federal to the local level from controlling or outlawing specified noxious drugs (i.e. the "right to smoke dope") is? And I refer you to my previous answer about not having a "Megan's Law" when the Constitution was established (was there a previously existing "right to molest"?).
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