Posted on 05/10/2006 7:31:03 AM PDT by cryptical
America's war on drugs is actually a Raid on Taxpayers. The war costs an estimated $70 billion a year to prosecute, and the drugs keep pouring in. But while the War on Drugs may have failed its official mission, it is a great success as a job-creation program. Thousands of drug agents, police, detectives, prosecutors, judges, anti-drug activists, prison guards and their support staffs can thank the program for their daily bread and health benefits.
The American people are clearly not ready to decriminalize cocaine, heroine or other hard drugs, but they're well on their way to easing up on marijuana. A Zogby poll found that nearly half of Americans now want pot legal and regulated, like alcohol. Few buy into the "demon drug" propaganda anymore, and for a simple reason: Several countries have decriminalized marijuana with little effect on public health.
Americans could save a ton of money doing the same. The taxpayers spend almost $8 billion a year enforcing the ban on marijuana, according to a report by visiting Harvard economist Jeffrey A. Miron. State and local governments consume about $5 billion of the total.
The war on pot fills our jails. America arrests 755,000 people every year for marijuana infractions -- the vast majority for possession, not dealing. An estimated 80,000 people now sit behind bars on marijuana offenses.
The Bush administration stoutly supports the campaign against marijuana, which others think is crazy. Compare the Canadian and American approach to medical marijuana: The Canadian Postal Service delivers it right into the mailboxes of Canadian cancer patients. The U.S. Justice Department invades the patients' backyards and rips out cannabis plants, even those grown with a state's blessing.
The Bush administration isn't going to last forever, nor is the patience of Americans paying for and suffering under the ludicrous war on marijuana. Surely letting sick people smoke marijuana to ease their discomfort -- 11 states have approved such, including Rhode Island -- would be a good start for a more enlightened drug policy.
For the drug warriors, however, this toe in the water seems a foot in the door for eventual decriminalization of pot. That's understandable. Relaxing the rules on marijuana would greatly reduce the need for their services.
Remember the Supreme Court case two years ago, when Justice Stephen Breyer innocently suggested that the federal Food and Drug Administration be asked to rule on whether marijuana had an accepted medical use? Well, the FDA has just ruled. In a total lie, the FDA said that no scientific studies back the use of marijuana for medical purposes. Actually, the prestigious Institute of Medicine issued its findings in 1999 that marijuana helped patients for pain and for the relief of nausea and vomiting caused by chemotherapy.
The federal government "loves to ignore our report," John Benson, a professor of medicine at the University of Nebraska and co-chairman of the committee that wrote the Institute of Medicine" study, said after the FDA issued its "advisory."
The Drug Enforcement Administration, which feeds off the drug war, plays a big part in stopping this and all future efforts to reach educated opinions on marijuana. Lyle Craker, a University of Massachusetts authority on medicinal plants, wanted to grow marijuana for the purpose of evaluating its possible medical uses. The DEA said no, insisting that he use marijuana from a University of Mississippi lab. The DEA knows full well that the UMiss pot is low-quality and therefore useless for study.
The drug warriors' incentive to keep the game going is pretty obvious. But what's in it for taxpayers?
Miron's Harvard study looked beyond what the public pays to enforce the marijuana laws. It also investigated how much money would roll in if marijuana were legal and taxed like alcohol. The answer was over $6 billion in annual tax revenues. Do the math: If government stopped outlawing marijuana and started taxing it, its coffers would be $14 billion richer every year.
We could use that money. For example, $14 billion could pay for all the anti-terrorism port-security measures required in the Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2002.
More than 500 economists of every political stripe have endorsed the Miron study. Growing numbers of Americans are beginning to agree with them: The war against marijuana is an expensive failure -- and pointless, too.
Froma Harrop is a Journal editorial writer and syndicated columnist. She may be reached by e-mail at: fharrop@projo.com.
Federal law in the United States originates with the Constitution,
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Pull up, whatever you feel like pulling up.
The constitution never saved smokers or drinkers( legal products) from excessive taxation.
Want to smoke a joint legally.
No problem. 100.00 a shot.
Don't like the price.... Quit.
The real Constitutional "bottom line" is that while it is fine to have a regulatory agency for 'pure food & drugs', -- nothing in the document gives the 'power to prohibit' drugs to any level of government in the USA.
If the foregoing is thrown out, we might as well go back to the days of The Jungle and snake-oil.
Hype. We have pure booze for sale everywhere in the USA, -- there is no reason we can't have pure recreational drugs for sale on the same 'reasonable regulations' basis.
The overarching consensus by the governing representative bodies at large is that addiction is conidered to be generally bad for society as a whole.
Tough. -- "overarching consensus by the governing representative bodies" [majority rule] does not govern in the USA. -- Our Constitution rules.
Providing for the general safety of the public (through regulation of commerce of potentially societally harmful substances is entirely Constitutional).
Nothing in the Constitution supports this theory. -- The opposite is supported, -- an individual person is not to be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.
-- Fiat prohibitions on supposedly 'unsafe' items of commerce infringe on those rights both in the enactment of such 'laws', -- and in their enforcement.
Would be great if all the recreational drug dealers and illegal drug peddlers would drop dead to leave the normal people on earth to better futures.
Think of how many lives have been ruined by recreational drugs?
Recreational drug use is a culture of the gutter and should die out for the good of us all IMO.
Better start building ovens. There's going to be a lot of bodies to get rid of.
What would happen is that the black market would step in to meet the demand at a more reasonable price; as is happening in states with excessive cigarette taxes. Agree or disagree?
Sounds like a good start so they don't screw up the good people's lives anymore.
Silence implies consent.
Do you believe that enough to kill them yourself?
Then he's apparently on board with the gun control and nationalized health care.
LOL! Most people just can't seem to grasp that there isn't one big fat lump of *law*... but several delicate layers of law.
That's what makes the Constitution such a brilliant document.
No matter how much information you try to give them, it never seems to help!
Is he using the term "stare decisis" to mean that lower courts must follow SCOTUS precedent? If so, is "stare decisis" the correct term for that constitutional requirement? (I've not never heard it used in that context before.)
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If he was speaking of where the judicary's legal force is delegated, then he's not correct. Judicial interpretations carry legal force under Art. III, Sec. 2:
The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States,...
SCOTUS may or may not follow stare decisis, but stare decisis is not what gives legal force to their rulings.
another druggie troller
You're a day late and a brain cell short, apparently.
What do you call someone who thinks the War on Drugs is constitutional, but the War on Poverty is not? -- An unprincipled LBJ constitutionalist.
yikes.
What would happen is that the black market would step in to meet the demand at a more reasonable price; as is happening in states with excessive cigarette taxes. Agree or disagree?
First sensible thing you've said on this thread.
Its true office is to expound the nature and extent and application of the powers actually conferred by the Constitution, and not substantively to create them. For example, the preamble declares one object to be, 'to provide for the common defense.' No one can doubt that this does not enlarge the powers of Congress to pass any measures which they deem useful for the common defence. But suppose the terms of a given power admit of two constructions, the one more restrictive, the other more liberal, and each of them is consistent with the words, but is, and ought to be, governed by the intent of the power; if one could promote and the other defeat the common defence, ought not the former, upon the soundest principles of interpretation, to be adopted? - Joseph Story in COMMENTARIESWith the foregoing, the Preamble to the Constitution sets the stage for the purpose of the implicitely enumerated powers that follow; they being delegated to Congress by the People for the People. It would be inconceivable in my mind to interprete any sort of Constitutional mandate for the regulation of the purity of anything if Congress has no authority to regulate the consumption of useless, deleterious or otherwise noxious substances, especially those that cause addiction, the burden it causes upon the individuals, their associates and society as an aggregate.
As I've indicated previously, if the General Welfare to society as a whole intent of the Constitution is invisible we can just go back to pre-1906 (Upton Sinclair) days, and forget about meat inspection, food inspection, and prohibition of sale of patent medicines. Guarenteed sanitary and sterile items and objects? Reckless endangerment? Clean water? Electrical (building/equipment) codes, fire codes? Building codes? Restaurant hygiene/cleanliness codes? Motor vehicle standards and regulations? Motor carrier safetyAnti-pollution laws? Clean-air standards? OSHA? Boating safety regulations? Office of pipeline safety? Why, the heck with it, we might as well scrap each and every one of these regulations as un-Constitutional (well, at least at a Federal level they are). In fact a whole butt-load of the U.S. Code in general could be just plain scrapped.
I think all of you guys that are arguing for the legalization of drugs haven't seen or experienced first hand the tradgedy caused by them. Haven't experienced first hand abusive alcoholic parents, haven't been personally affected by somebody close to you O.D'g or absolutely wrecking their life (and everybody around them). You haven't seen first hand the what crank/crack does to people. You personally haven't had to care for crack/crank/smack/fill-in-the-blank babies. Or havn't seen the permanent physical impairments that can be caused by drug abuse (Parkinsons, dementia, paralysis, memory loss, suicide, etc.). You people are so myopically focused on your seemingly innocuous drug (Mary Jane - hey its in all the books), that you're blinded to reality around you. You people are akin to those that are resistant to immunizations for their children (prefering instead to rely on the protection of herd immunity). I once challenged somebody about that, and was given a reply that there's risk of adverse affect. Adverse affect? Adverse affect? You haven't actually seen one of your own children (OR ANYBODY YOU MAY CARE ABOUT) actually die from whooping cough HAVE you? Because if you DID, you'd be singing a different tune.
Frankly, I'm remiss in understanding this obsession with this obsession for intoxication anyways. Why this compulsion for alter states of perception? What in the world is wrong with reality, and feeling the way one does. Is feeling sad on occasion bad? Is feeling happy not good enough, that one has to artificially coerce the emotion? Gee, I guess it is a Brave New World isn't it? Everybody pop their Soma now, y'hear?
Were you making a case in support of stare decisis on the part of SCOTUS with regard to drug laws? If so, do you support stare decisis with regard to Roe v Wade as well?
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