Pompo

Marijuana: Tax It, Regulate It, But Legalize It
3/26/09|U.S. News & World Report| by John Aloysius Farrell - Opinion

Legalize pot.

Regulate it. Tax the hell out of it. But legalize marijuana.

Do we need any more proof that our drug policy is bankrupt and counterproductive than what is going on along the Mexican border these days?

Do we really need to spend $8 billion a year wasting law enforcement's time, and building and staffing huge prisons for marijuana offenders, which only serve to give them post-graduate degrees in crime?

Couldn't we find better things to do with the $14 billion a year we would reap in recouped costs and taxes?

Wouldn't it be wiser to ensure that users buy pure and undoctored products from government dispensaries instead of unknown substances from shady evil guys?

Don't our own farmers deserve the cash crop?

Let's consider the opinion of over 500 economists, including the conservative darling, Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman.

"Existing evidence ... suggests prohibition has minimal benefits and may itself cause substantial harm," the economists concluded, when urging the country to have "an open and honest debate" about legalization.

Harvard Prof. Jeffrey Miron, in a June 2005 paper, came up with the figures cited above. A legalized but heavily regulated and taxed regime would save $7.7 billion in enforcement costs and yield up to $6.2 billion in revenue. And that is if marijuana were merely taxed at the levels of alcohol and cigarettes.

Late last month, in the pages of the Wall Street Journal (no liberal sheet that) three former presidents of Brazil, Columbia, and Mexico declared that the U.S. "war on drugs has failed." Who could argue with them? The drug cartels rule huge swaths of Afghanistan and Columbia and Mexico, despite the billions of dollars we spend to combat them. In too many places, the traffickers are allied with terrorist organizations.

And let's not delude ourselves. It's not poor Afghans and Mexicans who are using those drugs. It's the Russians and Europeans and Americans.

The three presidents—Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, Cesar Gaviria of Columbia, and Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico—presented a report from the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy. They noted that drug violence, in Mexico alone, took more than 5,000 lives last year.

"Prohibition policies based on eradication, interdiction and criminalization of consumption simply haven't worked," they wrote. "Violence and the organized crime associated with the narcotics trade remain critical problems in our countries. Latin America remains the world's largest exporter of cocaine and cannabis, and is fast becoming a major supplier of opium and heroin.

"Today, we are further than ever from the goal of eradicating drugs.

"The revision of US-inspired drug policies is urgent in light of the rising levels of violence and corruption associated with narcotics. The alarming power of the drug cartels is leading to a criminalization of politics and a politicization of crime. And the corruption of the judicial and political system is undermining the foundations of democracy in several Latin American countries."

The Puritan strain is still strong in the United States. And of course the baby boom cohort still insists on re-fighting its junior high school wars: prisses vs. rockers. You would think that, having tried the disastrous experiment of the Prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s, we would learn from the experience, but no.

I'm a realist. As long as the baby boomers are around and voting, and there is one last drip of emotional venom to be milked by politicians from the culture wars, the legalization of drugs is not in our immediate future.

But we can at least take a step back and examine our "war" with some kind of dispassionate and scientific eye, and remove the federal blockades that keep individual states from experimenting with alternative policies concerning marijuana.

What if we let Alaskans or Californians or residents in other libertarian-minded states—should they see fit—proceed as an initial step with the de-criminalization of marijuana, and some rudimentary commercialization, under government supervision?

To satisfy the Puritans, we could add to this a massive public education campaign about health hazards and personal responsibility (as the three Latin American presidents suggest), like those that have shown success combating smoking or littering.

By the time we boomers kick off, our kids and grandkids should have a formidable base of evidence to decide—free of our petty sniping and quarrels—whether legalization of drugs is, in fact, a good idea. At the very least, as the scientists say, we should start a serious debate.

Now, if only we had a few more politicians like Ron Paul and Kurt Schmoke, with the guts—with the audacity—to say so.

smarten-up

Can I get an Amen?

__________________
Killerchron has no weed
Killerchron has no money either
[smarten-up] that is very upsetting
[iloveunot] and no cell phone...
[Allen] No soul either

jpbc99

Not for nothing, but no you cant. Here we have another article trying to blurr the regulation of marijuana with ending the drug war. We don't want people mixing the two. The article starts off with contradicting itself. Let me explain. Alcohol is not legal. It is regulated. Not legal and regulated. A pack of gum is legal. So the proper pitch would be regulation. Change laws regarding marijuana to make them reflect those of alcohol.

The end of the article says it all.

By the time we boomers kick off, our kids and grandkids should have a formidable base of evidence to decide—free of our petty sniping and quarrels—whether legalization of drugs is, in fact, a good idea. At the very least, as the scientists say, we should start a serious debate.


After changing the topic from the headline, and bringing up "drugs" in general, the author then says hey...look at what is being said by presidents of 3rd world countrys...they want to legalize coke, heroin, and your pot.

The reform of marijuana laws has nothing to do with the currant status of other drugs. Infact, now is no better time to up the anti on the hard drugs. Like cocaine. Like heroin. Like abused prescription pain killers.

Like the border. Ask yourself what the objective of this article is? The author knows. If you poll americans, 44% favor legalization of marijuana. If you mention other drugs in the process, the realistic support drops to below 4%. More like 1%.

There are people attacking the regulation of marijuana from all fronts. One is the libertairian party trying to scare people away from it by making them think all drugs are gonna be legalized. They know there is no chance for change if people get freaked out that anyone who wants pot legal wants all drugs legal.

So there you have it. Its been said something like "be close with your friends...but be even closer with your enemys".

Its also time for the real movement for change in marijuana laws to take a stance and oust the notion that we want hard drugs legal.


If in the next 7 years cannabis is not regulated in the US, blame people like the author of this article. AMEN!

SleepyJohn

Amen Amen I Say to You, this post from the extend "Us News,and World Report", is more to My liking, than a lot of other less distinctive Journalism. So it says,and, So May It Be!

Buzzby

Wouldn't it be wiser to ensure that users buy pure and unadulterated products from the friendly clerk at the corner Convenient store? (Courtesy of the FDA, which ensures the purity and safety of all the food and drugs we buy.) The government doesn't have a monopoly on the sales of alcohol, tobacco, OTC, or prescription drugs. Why would anyone take the position that the government should produce and distribute marijuana when all other drugs are produced and distributed by private enterprise?

I'm a baby boomer, born in 1949 and graduating from high school in 1967. I wonder why I never heard of "prissies"? In the UK, they had "mods" and "rockers". "Prissies" is an entirely new one on me. We had "jocks", "eggheads", "thugs", and a few proto-hippies.

If you're paying attention to current events, you might revise your opinion. In the last couple of months, there has been more high-level discussion of legalizing marijuana than in the previous decade. The country seems, at last, to be coming around.

Doesn't that directly contradict your last statement about "the legalization of drugs in not in our immediate future"? "Removing the federal blockades" is legalizing marijuana.

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LowRider

Buzby i think he means the DEA. if you read the red part maybe you'll see what i mean. the DEA as you know controls who gets to study it. they are part of the Feds as we all know. That's what i see from "remove the Federal blockades. But then again he does say blockade(s), but I'm thinking the FDA as the other blockade. maybe I'm wrong after all the author doesn't list them. just another interpretation

Ianfagerstrom

Well, it's clear today that we have an uphill battle against the President (politician) Obama.

This is going to become a state's issue, which is a good thing. One state is all it takes, the rest will come in time.

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Peace, why not?

Frylok

Wow. That's it. The entire gist of the culture wars summed up in two statements. And in a major national publication! Great, GREAT stuff. You can almost feel the momentum building, can't you?

To all the remaining drug-warriors who are going to fight cannabis normalization, I would ask you: If you were standing at the bottom of the hill, and a 10,000 ton boulder was quickly rolling down the hill straight at you, would you just stand there and deny the boulder existed, would you hold out your hand and try to stop it, would you call on God to avert it's path, or would you move out of the boulder's way?

LowRider

I would just imagine it didn't exist.

good analogy by the way.

KWhite

I think the two are inextricably mixed.

The public gets it, read the letters to editors worldwide. They are usually about and for the legalization of all drugs.

They make the leap, intuitively, that all prohibition of substances and services (prostitution) that don't harm others should not be prohibited.
We that want marijuana liberalized so that our life is easier are more than willing to watch our neighbor have to whore her body to get what she needs to make her life.

As it now is

Bearable.

We talk up the violence in Mexico to our advantage and shout tht if they legalize OUR drug, the gangs and cartels will be dealt a real blow!
Yet, we know, deep down, that they will still be making money; enough profit to still be able to kill people on our and others streets because we are sure we won't legalize all drugs. We are willing to accept this rather than face a discussion that might not get us what we want as soon as we would like.

We are self serving hypocrites.

I think I am as disgusted with us as I am with President Obama.

We're all lying...