Drug WarRant

David Harsanyi has a particularly ignorant column at Reason about legalization, which is a real surprise. Waiting for the Man
The long road to marijuana legalization

This is someone who is in favorof legalization. He seems to be saying that nothing is going to come of legalization because the politicians aren’t ready to act, and we don’t have any arguments that will sway them (or sway the people enough to make them act).

His conclusion is:

The minority that wants real reform? Politically speaking, our bad arguments are terrible and our good ones are worse.

Really?

Well, maybe if you look through the arguments that he cherry-picked to represent us, and ignore all the arguments that he chose to leave out, then maybe you’d get a little of that feeling, but even then, you’d have to take his sarcasm seriously (I’m halfway wondering if his OpEd was supposed to be sarcastic and he really means the opposite, because he jokes a lot in it, but I’m having trouble reading it that way).

Sure, we can claim that illicit drugs are harmless. But having partaken in youthful “experimentation,” I can say with empirical certainty this is untrue. If drugs are harmless, why did I try to convert Pez dispensers into bongs or choose journalism as a career?

What a strange person.

Besides, we don’t claim that all illicit drugs are harmless. We claim that drug prohibition is harmful — much more so than drugs, without the benefit of reducing any of the harm of drugs. Now that’s a solid argument with traction. One he leaves out entirely.

Or we could keep pretending that pot has profound medicinal value. In Denver, a sham medical pot industry has blossomed, and coincidentally there have been mass outbreaks of Andromeda strain and cooties among 20-somethings. This makes a mockery of real sickness and threatens to turn one-time public support into deeper skepticism.

Pretending that pot has profound medicinal value? It does, and the fact that others want to use it as well doesn’t change the medicinal value.

We could argue that legalizing drugs would provide government with a great source of revenue. (No worries; the “wealthiest among us” would pay their fair share.) But a new Cato Institute study by Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron and Katherine Waldock at New York University finds that there would be a rather unexceptional $17.4 billion in yearly national budgetary improvement from legalizing marijuana.

Unexceptional. In today’s economy? Let’s see, with that money, you could send over two million young people to a state university for a year.

There are plenty of other solid arguments that can resonate with the people (and thereby to the politicians). Reducing corruption. Starving the black market. Reducing the collateral damage to society of being over-reliant on prisons. Improving the relationship of cops to the community. Doing a better job of helping those with drug problems.

I don’t know what Harsanyi was thinking, but it sure wasn’t Reasonable.

It’s a simple one.

If Proposition 19 passes, will you obey the law?

Jeffrey A. Miron has been the leading economist in studying the fiscal effects of the drug war. Just in time for the home stretch on Prop 19, he has teamed up with Katherine Waldock and CATO Institute to publish a white paper: The Budgetary Impact of Ending Drug Prohibition

The report concludes that drug legalization would reduce government expenditure by about $41.3 billion annually. […]

Legalization would also generate tax revenue of roughly $46.7 billion annually if drugs were taxed at rates comparable to those on alcohol and tobacco.

Now that’s a set of numbers to get a little bit excited over. But it’s only a set of numbers — a realistic look at what could be, assuming full legalization, and taking advantage of all the resulting cost savings and tax revenue. That’s what this kind of estimates are about. It doesn’t mean that we’re going to see $88 billion.

The most intellectually dishonest of the prohibition enablers out there see numbers like this and then, finding a reason why we might not see all of it, irrationally act like they have disproved legalization arguments.

But Miron understands, as do all us reformers, that economic benefits of legalization are just one of many benefits, and that any portion of that $88 billion is a bonus.

The conclusion is worth quoting at length:

First, the total impact of drug legalization on government budgets would be approximately $88 billion per year.

Second, about half of the budgetary improvement from legalization is due to reduced criminal justice expenditure. But for this component of the impact to show up in government budgets, policymakers would have to lay off police, prosecutors, prison guards, and the like. Because such a move would be politically painful, it may not occur. It is certainly true that reduced expenditure on enforcing drug prohibition can still be beneficial if those criminal justice resources are re-deployed to better uses, but that outcome is difficult to achieve.

Third, only about $17.4 billion in budgetary improvement can be expected to come from legalizing marijuana in isolation. Yet the current political climate gives no indication that legalization of other drugs is achievable in the short term. So the budgetary impact from the politically possible component of legalization—marijuana—seems fairly modest.

None of these considerations weakens the critique of drug prohibition since that critique has always rested mainly on other considerations, such as the crime, corruption, and curtailment of civil liberties that have been the side-effects of attempting to fight drug use with police officers and prisons. What the estimates provided here do provide are two additional reasons to end drug prohibition: reduced expenditure on law enforcement and an increase in tax revenue from legalized sales.

Exactly.

A really excellent OpEd at CNN.com by the Drug Policy Alliance’s Bill Piper.

It’s titled Time to end the war on marijuana, but clearly he’s talking about more than just marijuana.

Here are a couple of really outstanding quotes that give you an idea of the piece:

It is long past time to abandon the silly notion that America can be a drug-free nation. The inconvenient truth in drug policy is that Americans love drugs — alcohol, caffeine, marijuana, cocaine, and prescription drugs for everything from anxiety to fatigue. Although some people develop problems with their drug use, most do not. This holds true for both legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco, and illegal drugs like marijuana and cocaine. Decades of evidence shows that the average user of any drug doesn’t get addicted and doesn’t create problems for anyone else.

and…

What matters most is not how many people use marijuana, alcohol or other drugs, but what’s the best way to reduce the problems associated with substance misuse without creating more harmful social problems. Drug use rates rise and fall almost independently of what politicians say and do, but criminalizing drug use makes the situation worse. Prohibition doesn’t stop drug use; it makes drug use more dangerous while filling prisons with nonviolent offenders and making crime lords rich.

And again, nice to see such an OpEd featured at a place like CNN.

Why Parents Should Support Legalizing Pot

My son just started kindergarten. So naturally, I have been thinking a lot about the type of world and community in which I want him and our seven-year-old daughter to live. I am involved in a project to improve school lunches in our district to reinforce the nutrition lessons we teach in our home. I am a founding board member of a community group trying to improve our city’s parks. And I am working to help pass Proposition 19, the initiative to control and tax marijuana in California. It is important to me as a mother that my children grow up in a state—hopefully a country soon—that rejects the ineffective and damaging policy of marijuana prohibition. It may be counterintuitive, but legalizing marijuana will be better and safer for our children.

I’ve noticed a consistent but baseless distortion being spread by opponents of California’s Proposition 19, which would legalize, regulate and tax cannabis. They complain that Prop 19 is poorly crafted and/or would produce an unenforceable “patchwork” of regulation. The reality is that, compared with most propositions in California’s history, Prop 19 is very sensibly written, with the express purpose of giving state and local governments maximum flexibility to make legal marijuana workable. The fictitious, nightmarish “patchwork” of regulations caused by allowing local governments to craft local ordinances is no different than how local governments handle almost everything in our economy, including alcohol, parking, pizza ovens, farmers markets and building codes.

Apparently quite a ruckus. I still have nothing but contempt by those who are so shortsighted and selfish that they’re willing to throw away a chance at legalization, and starting a national movement because it’s not exactly what they wanted.

We are asked to believe that people drinking a daily six-pack for a quarter-century is not a lamentable sign of a health crisis, but instead a “lifestyle” triumph worthy of flag-colored celebration — and we are expected to think that legalizing a safer alternative to this “lifestyle” is dangerous. Likewise, as laws obstruct veterans from obtaining doctor-prescribed marijuana for post-traumatic stress disorder, we are asked to believe that shotgunning cans of lager is the real way to “support our troops.”

Open Thread.

The organizations and web sites of those opposing Prop 19 have been really ridiculous — tired old nonsense that’s been disproved over and over. I was beginning to despair of finding a site that could possibly give us a decent challenge.

Well, there is one. Someone stopped by and gave us the link in comments, but it was caught by the spam filter (perhaps the spam filter is politically watching my back?) But I rescued it.

www.opposeprop19.com

California Prop 19 would have California treat marijuana much the same way we now treat alcohol following Prohibition. Adults would have the option of legally using marijuana in the privacy of their home. Prop 19 is nothing more than a crude attempt to undo over 70 years of Harry Anslinger’s enlightened approach towards marijuana.

The site includes the true story of how the narcotics squad got the hopped up killer, or this tragedy:

THE sprawled body of a young girl lay crushed on the sidewalk the other day after a plunge from the fifth story of a Chicago apartment house. Everyone called it suicide, but actually it was murder. The killer was a narcotic known to America as marijuana

The site’s conclusion is compelling…

If we can put every marijuana user in jail and we can find and kill every single marijuana plant, there would be almost no violent crime left in America. This fact is recognized by the liquor industry. That’s why the liquor industry supports our efforts to defeat Prop 19 with such generous financial contributions.

Keep the status quo by defeating Prop 19. Join with Rep. Lamar Smith, other self-interested politicians, a large percentage of law enforcement, prison guards, the liquor industry, Mexican cartels, and thousands of drug dealers in opposing Prop 19. Don’t let our prisons go under-utilized. Arresting marijuana users makes good sense and is just plain good business.

Somebody put a lot of good work into that site.

Update: Read this before commenting. The site I’m talking about here is a parody. Be sure to know what that means before you comment. You can always look it up on teh Google. This is part of a basic education, people. Breathe. Laugh. and…. Lighten up, Francis.

I swear if another person shows up in the comments all pissed off by the material from this site, I’m going to pass a law saying that everyone but you gets to smoke pot legally.

You know how difficult it is to get prohibitionists to agree to debates or to appear in a public forum? They’re usually pretty much afraid to face us.

Well, they finally came up with a format that was acceptable….

The Wednesday “Just the Facts” forum, sponsored by Coalition for a Drug-Free Nevada County and Grass Valley Chamber of Commerce, featured seven panelists who oppose the Nov. 2 ballot measure to legalize marijuana, Proposition 19.

They included Nevada County District Attorney Cliff Newell, Nevada County Sheriff’s Sgt. Bill Smethers, Grass Valley Police Capt. Rex Marks, Chip Arenchild of InterWest insurance, Michelle Gregory of the California Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement, Earle Jamison High School Principal Anita Bagwell and Aimee Hendle, a representative of the San Diego-based group Californians for Drug Free Youths.

Apparently the ironically named “Just the Facts” forum decided that Proposition 19 wasn’t a very good idea. Kudos to the participants for managing to counter the opposition so well.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger chastises the SEIU for endorsing Prop 19 because legalizing marijuana will bring risks to public safety, and…

“It would also make California a laughingstock.”

I was both busy and out of town the past couple of days, and need to catch up on reading the voluminous comments here. You guys certainly get some good discussions going….

There’s an interesting think piece in today’s Washington Post (thanks, Daniel) by Kwame Anthony Appiah: What will future generations condemn us for?

…Looking back at such horrors, it is easy to ask: What were people thinking?

Yet, the chances are that our own descendants will ask the same question, with the same incomprehension, about some of our practices today.

Kwame goes on to point out that by looking back, you can identify tip-offs that a practice may be a future past horror. Some sounded familiar, such as “supporters engage in what one might call strategic ignorance, avoiding truths that might force them to face the evils in which they’re complicit.” Yeah, no kidding.

He pick the prison system as his first example, and it’s spot on.

He doesn’t actually use the drug war as one of his prognostications, although he does say “Whether a country that was truly free would criminalize recreational drug use is a related question worth pondering.”

However, I think it’s clear that the drug war is one of those travesties that will be reviled in some way by future generations. How is uncertain. Will it be like the horrible disgust we have hearing about the burning of witches? Or will it be like the Hayes code silliness, where we reminisce about how they used to have to show married couples in separate beds on TV?

Will the prohibitionists be considered “a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came,” or will subtly shifting attitudes and political forgetfulness blur the lines causing everyone to come out of it looking good?

How do you want to be remembered for your role in the drug war? Do you want to be one of those who sat in your living room looking out the window at the flashing lights thinking “Well, at least they didn’t come for me.”?