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.
Since the original post you replied to was not made by a druggie, nor did it advocate free drugs, but simply pointed out the Constitutional problems with the current drug war, then there has to be more to it than that. Tell me more about this glorious revolution of yours, and this new, improved Constitution. You plan on writing that yourself?
The Supreme Court just now said I'm right and you're wrong.
Will you hold their opinion as authoritative in the case of Roe v. Wade, or are you simply an opportunist? Justice Clarence Thomas dissents with the court's decision (any you). Can you tell my where the fault lies with his reasoning?
http://www.aas.org/publications/baas/v26n4/aas185/abs/S8110.html
One of many sources.
With that said, MJ should be legal.
Same could be said about countless other things.
Who is going to force the bus driver to smoke pot?
But "responsible adults" smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, and down unknown quantities of "legal" drugs.
Force masks on them? No. But provide free bags to put over their heads when taking a closing time queen home on Friday? Yes.
I must be clueless and have a very active imagination becauuse I regularly see news reports about MJ busts.
I would wager my lifes fortune that if you tried, you could not get a constitutional amendment banning MJ if your life depended on it in the next 15 years.
No. The Supreme Court ruled that states can not ignore federal law and pass law that violates federal law. The Supreme Court further said that congress can change the current federal law to allow for states to do differently.
Of course when you say drugs you mean cocain marijuana and shrooms but what about perscription drugs and there users and addicts. More people die in one year from perscription drugs than the amount of people who die from marijuana in ten years. Perscription drugs and Alcohol are far more addictive and deadly that marijuana will ever be.
I think your post 414 should have been directed at muawiyah, not me.
The U.s. figures were never anywhere near that level when opiates were legal ... and as Ken H has shown, the available evidence (provide better if you can) indicates that the U.S. rate was raised by criminalization.
Chou En Lei and Mao Tse Tung finally put an end to this incredibly high rate of addiction through the remarkably simple expedient of removing addict's heads from their necks.
The Communists made many changes that made their War On Drugs easier to conduct, but very few of which we would want to adopt in this free country.
Here's the difference: the WoT creates no incentives for terrorism, whereas the WoD does create incentives for crack neighborhooods by increasing the relative benefit for users to congregate.
You've discussed the 'extermination' of 'druggies' as a means to end the war on drugs. How about instead of killing millions of people to end this 'blight' on our nation, we take a realistic look at drugs and how we deal with the situation. The keyword being 'realistic' you drugnazi. Recreational drug use has been around since man found that by eating certain plants he got buzzed, and that was probably long before we invented fire or the wheel.
When the user becomes the used, there is a problem, and that goes for everything from marijuana to chocolate cake. If a responsible adult wants to get high in his living room and watch three hours of spongebob squarepants, what business is it of yours or the government if they wake up and go to work the next day without a problem?
Those who get hooked on drugs are destined to do so, consider it social darwinism. Those who cannot cope with reality wind up falling away from it. Those who wish to escape it from time to time always come back, just as good if not better than before. Consider it a vacation that lasts a few hours instead of two weeks.
You are and unfortunately always will be a blind idealogue, something which you cannot deny. If you ever open your eyes to reality, come back to the debate. Until that day, stop commenting on things you cannot understand.
Unless you're willing to do something about it the current state of the law, per the LIBERAL MAJORITY on the USSC is that MJ is a regulated commodity.
I think it's absolutely hilarious that the druggies who otherwise suck mightily on the orifices and appendages of the Liberals and Libertarians in high places are stuck with a dissenting opinion by Justice Thomas, Chief Justice Rhenquist and Justice O'Connor.
I am sure you share with me the sense of irony this brings.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.