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.
I can guess one thing; legalizing crack, smack and gak isn't going to totally eliminate their use and those users aren't going to suddently become CEO's and pay for their government produced drugs, food and shelter out of their six figure salaries.
But if what's left is all in your neighborhood and you're okay with it that's a plan.
Except for reality, you got a plan.
"Prohibition didn't work for alcohol so what makes people think it will work for any other drug?"
I'm still waiting for a rational answer to that question. I never have heard one which is why I had to leave the 'drug warrior' camp a few years ago. I have no great love for tobacco, alcohol, pot or anything else of that nature. A great deal of evidence for the 'badness' of each one of these things can be produced. But the 'badness' of something does not establish that it should therefore be a criminal offense. There are MANY things that are bad, but we wouldn't want to criminalize all of them. In fact, one of the great struggles in our culture is that there are groups looking to ban, restrict or criminalize pretty much anything you can think of. Fur, fat in food, sugar in food, not exercising enough etc.
Also, I think that more than a few pro-WOD posters want to portray everyone who is against the WOD as being a pro-drug doper. This is dishonest but since they can't answer the real questions, they defame their opponents. Shame on them. Prohibition was an unconstitutional disaster, but at least the policitians were honest enough to admit that they didn't have the authority without amending the constitution. Today they don't even bother to pretend to care about such things. Drug abuse is bad but the WOD is worse and even more distructive.
Agreed, but hasn't it been the ONDCP which has been pushing that idea? Didn't they call today's pot the "crack cocaine of marijuana"?
You are ducking and weaving to evade my simple question: Exactly what alleged "experience" is it that suggests that just about everyone making an argument in support of unregulating drug use is an abuser?
We've learned a lot since your 79 year old mother first toked up.
My mother is 65 and never used marijuana. Leave her out of this conversation.
Name two.
Should tell us something, and I can think of several things.
It tells us only that alcohol is a simpler molecule.
Nor has criminalization. What's your point?
Could it be ... oh, I don't know ... maybe your change of location?
Can you provide a source for this?
Since alcohol is fermented, which requires living bacteria, I'm pretty sure this would be a very significant discovery and I don't remember hearing anything about it.
How has criminalization helped?
How has criminalization helped?
Rubbish; Washington's time had many ills for which neither he nor any other Founder advocated federal involvement.
Their dope problem destroyed their civilization and led to the deaths of hundreds of millions of people in the 19th and 20th centuries.
America will ultimately have to use the same methods the Chinese did to eliminate or minimize the problem.
Never happen GI.
Guess it's a rant eh?
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