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New Reports All Agree: Marijuana Prohibition is an Expensive Failure
Three Nobel Laureates, American Enterprise Institute, others call for a new approach

MPP.org | 07/07/2006

Five recent reports -- from the American Enterprise Institute, Citizens Against Government Waste, Taxpayers for Common Sense, The Sentencing Project, and a Harvard University economics professor -- point out the failures and steep costs of marijuana prohibition and call for a new approach.

Ending Marijuana Prohibition Would Save $10-14 Billion Annually ... Report Endorsed by Milton Friedman and More Than 500 Economists
In "The Budgetary Implications of Marijuana Prohibition" (released June 2, 2005), Dr. Jeffrey Miron, visiting professor of economics at Harvard University, estimates that replacing marijuana prohibition with a system of taxation and regulation similar to that used for alcoholic beverages would produce combined savings and tax revenues of between $10 billion and $14 billion per year.

More than 500 distinguished economists -- led by Nobel Prize-winner Dr. Milton Friedman and two additional Nobel Laureates -- endorsed the report and signed an open letter to President Bush and other public officials calling for "an open and honest debate about marijuana prohibition," adding, "We believe such a debate will favor a regime in which marijuana is legal but taxed and regulated like other goods."

Using data from a variety of federal and state government sources, Miron concludes:

Replacing marijuana prohibition with a system of legal regulation would save approximately $7.7 billion in government expenditures on prohibition enforcement -- $2.4 billion at the federal level and $5.3 billion at the state and local levels.

Revenue from taxation of marijuana sales would range from $2.4 billion per year if marijuana were taxed like ordinary consumer goods to $6.2 billion if it were taxed like alcohol or tobacco.

The full report and its full list of endorsers are available here.

Citizens Against Government Waste: Government Anti-Drug Programs Don't Work
The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy’s (ONDCP's) expensive drug control programs have failed to produce any meaningful results after 17 years, finds a May 12, 2005, report from Citizens Against Government Waste, a national organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.

"Up in Smoke: ONDCP's Wasted Efforts in the War on Drugs" shows how ONDCP wastes millions of dollars annually on media advertising and combating state-level legislation. The report's findings include:

ONDCP "has morphed into a federal wasteland, throwing taxpayer money toward numerous high-priced drug control programs that have failed to show results ... Instead of curbing America’s drug problem, ONDCP has wasted $4.2 billion since fiscal 1997 on media advertising, fighting state legislation, and deficient anti-drug trafficking programs."

Since Arizona and California passed medical marijuana laws in November 1996, ONDCP began campaigning against state medical marijuana ballot initiatives, which is "an infringement upon states' rights, a blatant misuse of tax dollars, and in contravention of ONDCP’s original mission. The White House’s drug office should use its resources to root out major drug operations in the U.S. instead of creating propaganda-filled news videos and flying across the country on the taxpayers' dime."

"ONDCP burns through tax dollars by funding wasteful and unnecessary projects. Partly to thwart state efforts to regulate marijuana, the drug czar created a $2 billion national anti-drug campaign, produced expensive propaganda ads that failed to reduce drug use among America’s youth, and in the process, violated federal law. Furthermore, the office wastes federal resources by opposing any legalization of marijuana, including medicinal use, which has nothing to do with the war on drugs."

The full report is available here.

War on Drugs has Become War on Low-Level Marijuana Users
During the 1990s, the “war on drugs” was transformed to a “war on marijuana,” with law enforcement officials shifting their focus to arresting increasing numbers of low-level marijuana offenders, finds a Sentencing Project report released on May 3, 2005.

"The War on Marijuana: The Transformation of the War on Drugs in the 1990s" finds that between 1990 and 2002, 82% of the national increase in drug arrests were for marijuana offenses, and nearly all of this increase was arrests for possession. Marijuana arrests now constitute 45% of the 1.5 million drug arrests annually.

As a result, significant policing resources have been dedicated to low-level offenses, with only 6% of marijuana arrests resulting in a felony conviction. One-quarter of people in prison for a marijuana offense are low-level offenders.

Despite the billions of dollars being spent annually on marijuana law enforcement, use and availability have not declined, while cost has dropped.

The full report is available here.

American Enterprise Institute: Prison is not an effective drug policy
American drug policy should focus on expanding treatment options and not on prison, says a new book from the American Enterprise Institute, one of the country's most respected conservative think tanks.

In An Analytic Assessment of U.S. Drug Policy (published in February 2005), Peter Reuter, a professor at the University of Maryland and a senior economist in the Drug Policy Research Center at RAND, and independent consultant David Boyum use a market framework to assess the effectiveness of anti-drug efforts ... and conclude that they have failed.

The authors note that while there is little evidence that tougher law enforcement reduces drug use, drug policy has become increasingly punitive -- the number of drug offenders in jail and prison grew tenfold between 1980 and 2003. They recommend the following changes:

Law enforcement should focus on reducing drug-related problems, such as violence associated with drug markets, rather than on locking up large numbers of low-level dealers.

Treatment services for heavy users need more money and fewer regulations, and programs that coerce convicted drug addicts to enter treatment and maintain abstinence as a condition of continued freedom should be expanded.

The full report is available here.

Taxpayers for Common Sense: Effectiveness of billions spent to stop marijuana use remains unknown
Despite the federal government spending tens of billions to combat marijuana use over the last three decades, use and perception of the drug has barely changed, according to an economic study released by Taxpayers for Common Sense, a national budget watchdog organization that targets wasteful and ineffective federal spending.

"Federal Marijuana Policy: A Preliminary Assessment," released June 28, 2005, finds that efforts to reduce marijuana use and supply cost federal taxpayers billions, despite no evidence that the programs actual work. "Despite sky-high deficits, taxpayers continue to watch their money go up in smoke funding expensive but ineffective government programs intended to reduce marijuana use," said a Taxpayers for Common Sense spokesman.

The report assesses the cost of the nation's anti-marijuana efforts and the effect those efforts have had on marijuana use and finds the program to have been a failure, noting that increased federal spending on marijuana has accompanied increased use.

The report singles out as particularly wasteful and ineffective marijuana arrests (which have not stemmed marijuana usage rates), the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy's youth anti-drug media campaign, and student drug Testing programs.

"The ultimate measure of The Drug War's worth is its impact on drug usage," concludes the report. "By this standard, the federal marijuana program has fared poorly. Rather than continue to spend billions of dollars on the problem, it would be better for the U.S. government to get out of the marijuana business entirely."

The full report, which the MPP grants program helped to fund, is available here.

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killer12382

Not only is it a failure but also a wasted opportunity to generate income for the state through taxes on cannabis.

QuestionMark

i read an arab proverb somewhere that said "arrogance and intelligence cant live together" it makes so much sense. it explains a lot about certain governments who shall remain nameless.