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.
It's much better to "care" than to have a greater interest in facilitating the importation of narcotics into African-American neighborhoods.
Alcohol is required in many biological processes. Your stuff isn't.
There are no special alcohol receptors in the brain, but there are specific cannibinoid receptors (cannibinoid=cannibis=marijuana in case you were wondering). Now this does not prove that it is a required biological process, but our bodies were designed to use cannabis. Processes that require alcohol make it within the cells, there is no need to import it. So your argument is doubly false.
My own theory is that with the advent of domestic sources, your memories of Mexican "$hit", called that for it's extraneous content, mislead you into thinking the domestic stuff is "stronger". Actually, it's just more concentrated due to the absence of filler~!
I'm not even going to explain why you're wrong, I'm going to let you figure that one out for yourself. I'll give you a hint though, where cocaine is sold in a processed powdered form that allows one to "cut" the true ammount of the drug, marijuana is sold and used in it's original form only dried. Stop posting about drugs if you don't know anything about them, you're beginning to sound like Harry J. Anslinger.
Sure, we have receptors for very microscopic quantities of various opiads, but the aggregate design is not to consume mass quantities like some cone head sucking down eggs and beer.
Now, regarding alcohol, it's been found in intersteller space. MJ hasn't.
No doubt if it is found you'll want to go there. We will contribute to your trip!
I suspect you're about ready to give up having shot your "name calling" wad and tried to call me a Nazi. That is, after all, a sign that you've lost all the arguments.
You should trouble yourself.
Legalize it and then let the trial lawyers sue the pot industry for the even greater rates of lung cancer that marijuana causes compared to cigarettes.
Marijuana does not have to be smoked to get you high. Vaporizors (if paraphernalia were legal, they too would be more widespread) heat the cannabis to release the THC and other cannabinoids to a temperature well below burning, thereby keeping the carcinogens found in the smoke trapped. Not only is it safer, less cannabis is needed since less of the drug is burned away by fire.
Eating cannabis (in the form of Hash) is ten times more potent and lasts at least twice as long, also without releasing carcinogens found only when cannabis is burned.
Oh good, maybe we can waste even more money on educating everyone to why they shouldn't do it since the national WODs has worked so well.
You know you can drink a beer and not get drunk. I have yet to meet anyone who smokes MJ for anything but the effect sought.
They are not the same thing.
Per unit quantity of smoke perhaps, but isn't tobacco a wee bit more conducive to chainsmoking than pot.
Cannabinoid receptors react with only one set of chemicals produced by one variety of plant life on the whole of the world. Opate (opiad sounds like some sort of athlete high on heroin trying to do the pole vault) receptors work with a myriad of substances, man made, plant made, and chemicals made within the brain itself.
Interstellar alcohol - big effing whoop. It's a simple carbon-chain molecule, no doubt found in great abundance in the universe.
Now as for potency of cannabis - while it is true that there is no way to make THC more potent, it is possible to grow a plant that produces more THC glands, making the cannabis more potent in THC. Many a pothead has studied botany throughout the years and a great many strains and hybrids have been developed to produce more THC pound to pound against your "Mexican MJ" which may have been the "good stuff" when you were back on the block, but now it's high-yeild high-potency stuff coming out of middle aged white-guy's attic.
You wish.
0.02-0.03 BAC: No loss of coordination, slight euphoria and loss of shyness. Depressant effects are not apparent.
0.04-0.06 BAC: Feeling of well-being, relaxation, lower inhibitions, sensation of warmth. Euphoria. Some minor impairment of reasoning and memory, lowering of caution.
0.07-0.09 BAC: Slight impairment of balance, speech, vision, reaction time, and hearing. Euphoria. Judgement and self- control are reduced, and caution, reason and memory are impaired.
0.10-0.125 BAC: Significant impairment of motor coordination and loss of good judgement. Speech may be slurred; balance, vision, reaction time and hearing will be impaired. Euphoria. It is illegal to operate a motor vehicle at this level of intoxication.
0.13-0.15 BAC: Gross motor impairment and lack of physical control. Blurred vision and major loss of balance. Euphoria is reduced and dysphoria is beginning to appear.
0.16-0.20 BAC: Dysphoria (anxiety, restlessness) predominates, nausea may appear. The drinker has the appearance of a "sloppy drunk."
0.25 BAC: Needs assistance in walking; total mental confusion. Dysphoria with nausea and some vomiting.
And ends bad--
0.30 BAC: Loss of consciousness.
0.40 BAC and up: Onset of coma!!, possible death!!! due to respiratory arrest.
If your problem is getting drunk on one beer, you have a problem neither I nor MJ can help you with. I suggest you find another path to satori in real time eh?!
You wish.
Thank you for such an eloquent response, now how bout responding to my comments? Sucks when you're backed into a corner, doesn't it?
Before you pull "facts" from your ___, please check them against a real source. Also, refrain from trying to sound like you know what you're talking about by using the term "Mexican MJ" you sound silly.
I wonder what the legal limit would be for DUI. And what the social costs would be of millions of people driving while stoned.
Not when I smoked it. :-)
Smoked which? How could you do a pack of pot without becoming far too zonked to keep it up?
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