Posted on 06/02/2005 4:40:30 AM PDT by Wolfie
Milton Friedman: Legalize It!
SAN FRANCISCO, CA - 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 and ConAgra Foods as potential growers or distributors and liquor businesses like Constellation Brands and Allied Domecq, which understand the distribution of intoxicants. Surprisingly, Home Depot 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.
BTW, my arguments are concise, insightful, and highly structured and rational. The only problem here has to do with my critics.
Canada is not really a good example to look at. Use the Netherlands.
You are intolerant toward a group of people and you assume everybody in this group thinks and acts a certain way without any evidence to support your claim.
Use of that word implies that you "believe" drugs, and that could be a problem. (LMAOROTF).
That statement is nonsense. Clearly you don't understand the meaning of the word "bigoted" or "bigot" - look them up and get back to me (after you are done rolling on the floor)
Claiming everybody that uses marijuana is irresponsible is not an argument, it is not insightful and it is not rational - it is bigoted nonsense presented in the complete absence of any supporting evidence. Maybe you should spend more time thinking out your statements and doing research and less time rolling on the floor.
Some 224 or so years ago I am pretty sure you would have been saying "responsible adults don't oppose the King of England"
You just want to avoid discussing the hard issues by dismissing anyone who disagrees with you as a "bigot".
That qulifies your response as mere "name calling.
Did I claim that? You'll have to show me.
I'll figure it out for you, and if you qualify, chain you to my basement wall for whatever period of time is necessary to bring you around to a rational point of view.
Thanks, but no thanks.
Now, tell me about that government part. I always love to hear how the government would never permit me to do that!
Government preventing you from chaining me to your basement wall is a considerably narrower mandate than them generally deciding what is irrational behavior ... if you're implying a contradiction, it's not there.
This sort of argument would have never been allowed back in the day FUR SHUR (and you'd still be chained to that wall).
Probably.
Our last alcohol Prohibition was a miserable failure; what makes you think another one (or drug prohibition) will work any better?
I made no such claim. My claim is that a government that assumes the power to generally determine what is irrational behavior, and punish it on that basis, is evil.
They are believed to have conducted the St. Valentine's Day Massacre which involved killing 7 gangsters high involved with peddling booze in Chicago.
No doubt they did other things. Actually, many other things.
You would be better served in asking me where lines should be drawn between private initiative and government limitation ~ which is what our discussion had led to ~ me in my home enjoying pork pie and beer, and you in my basement, chained to the wall, dieing for a smoke!
Wrong. The subject is banning alcohol; you support it, and I'm pointing out its record of failure.
You would be better served in asking me where lines should be drawn between private initiative and government limitation
OK. Where should lines be drawn between private initiative and government limitation? (And why there?)
Legalization has been tried before, and failed miserably.
Legalization proponents claim, absurdly, that making illegal drugs legal would not cause more of these substances to be consumed, nor would addiction increase. They claim that many people can use drugs in moderation and that many would choose not to use drugs, just as many abstain from alcohol and tobacco now. Yet how much misery can already be attributed to alcoholism and smoking? Is the answer to just add more misery and addiction?
It's clear from history that periods of lax controls are accompanied by more drug abuse and that periods of tight controls are accompanied by less drug abuse.
In 1880, many drugs, including opium and cocaine, were legal — and, like some drugs today, seen as benign medicine not requiring a doctor's care and oversight. Addiction skyrocketed. During the 19th Century, morphine was legally refined from opium and hailed as a miracle drug. Many soldiers on both sides of the Civil War who were given morphine for their wounds became addicted to it, and this increased level of addiction continued throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. In 1880, many drugs, including opium and cocaine, were legal — and, like some drugs today, seen as benign medicine not requiring a doctor's care and oversight. Addiction skyrocketed. There were over 400,000 opium addicts in the U.S. That is twice as many per capita as there are today.
By 1900, about one American in 200 was either a cocaine or opium addict. [end excerpt]
______________________________
Let us calculate. In 1880, when drugs were legal, there were 400,000 people addicted to opium. US population was 50,000,000 in 1880, so the addiction rate was 1.25%. By 1900, the addiction rate to either opium or cocaine was 0.5%. So, even when the cocaine addicts were added to the totals for 1900, the addiction rate still FELL by at least 60%.
Fast forward to 2000:
"There were an estimated 980,000 hardcore heroin addicts in the United States in 1999, 50 percent more than the estimated 630,000 hardcore addicts in 1992."
--www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs07/794/heroin.htm
"The demand for both powdered and crack cocaine in the United States is high. Among those using cocaine in the United States during 2000, 3.6 million were hardcore users who spent more than $36 billion on the drug in that year."
--http://www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs07/794/cocaine.htm
Adding the two together, it works out to about 4.5 mllion hardcore users. Using a population figure of 290,000,000, you get a rate (1.5%) that is triple what it was when prohibition was just getting started.
To summarize for those in Rio Linda, addiction rates fell by at least 60% for the 20 years from 1880 to 1900. Then it tripled from 1900-2000 during prohibition.
The correct headline should be:
In the abscence of prohibition, addiction plunged from 1880 to 1900, then addiction tripled over the next 100 years under prohibition.
People who spout the "Legalization fails" shibboleth always leave out their first premise - That the only acceptable result of drug policy is zero use. So even if only one person uses, legalization would be considered a "failure".
No, you clearly are intolerant of a group of people and you try to claim the entire group acts a certain way. That is textbook bigotry. Based on your comment earlier - you clearly don't understand the meaning of the word.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1416110/posts
You might like to take this discussion to our new thread.
Other than Reagan, perhaps the greatest American of the 2nd half of the 20th Century. I'd like to see his face on the $50 bill in twenty years.
Ok
muawiyah:"Responsible adults" don't use MJ.
Same logic, 224 years ago:
muawiyah:"Responsible adults" don't oppose the king.
Seems you are trying to claim the illegality is what makes something responsible or not responsible. If your wording was sloppy and you meant something else - please clarify. BTW: only a bigot claims tens of thousands of people are all irresponsible.
Time for LOGIC 101.
Around here most MJ users are irresponsible teenage punks.
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