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.
The Dutch rank 87th in seizures/capita vs. a US rank-- just kidding!
I'm still trying to figure out how the US Census Bureau, having thrown out the 1880 census as you claimed, still has it on their records.
We've got laws against killing people. We have plenty of people being murdered.
Because?
You are already supposed to know that.
It' sone of the reasons many of us ask guys like you why it is you seem so intent on having us ratchet up the WOD to the Chinese level because that's exactly what we are going to do if our present mamby-pamby methods are having no effect.
I gave you a URL with the santized official Census Bureau report on the matter, but even they admit that it was necessary to hire Hollreith to invent punchcards and the comptometer for the next census.
Did you really have that much trouble with Computers 101?
BTW, the Dutch also fail to record all the euthenasias in the country, and they certainly don't categorize them as murders as we would.
ping
Someday after you've learned the name of the country you might dig through their records.
Of course there are no "old people" when it comes to junkies. They don't live that long.
Ever try to run a country with 15% of your working age people stuffed in an opium den ~ 'twas very difficult.
Name it!
I saw that. I think it is the way the crimes are reported which accounts for the difference. From Nationmaster.com (numbers are per 1000 population):
Burglary: US- 7.2, Spain- 0.6.
Assault: US-7.7, Spain-2.2
Murder: US- 0.04, Spain- 0.01
The Netherlands figures are closer to Spain's than the US.
Are the liberal drug laws responsible for the relative numbers we see?
"You should have them move into your neighborhood. In fact, if you have enough money (to pay for the moves), your local police will tell you were they have a bunch of them."
What's your point? Do you think there's no pot in your neighborhood? Do you think there's no coke? Do you think drugs exist only in the 'bad' parts of town? You're comment added nothing to the debate. Tell us how we can stop unhappy people from medicating themselves. No one in human history has EVER figure that one out. I think the idea that you can heal the failings of human nature using the power of the state is profoundly un-conservative.
Please, I would love to have anyone tell me why they have hope in the WOD. Tell me why you think it will EVER do anything but give the state more and more power over us. Tell me why, in the course of human history, you think we can stop drug abuse when all others have failed. Tell me why I should put my faith in the WOD. I'd love to hear a sound, well reasoned argument for it.
What are the eternal, fundamental principles of right and wrong that tell us a person who smokes pot should be considered a criminal? Alcohol was legal, then illegal, now it's legal again. Did the fundamental principles of right and wrong change?
I understand why a murderer is a criminal. I understand why a thief is a criminal. I understand why a rapist is a criminal. I don't understand why a doper is a criminal. They certainly are making choices I wouldn't make, but why should they be made criminals?
It's not as hopeless as you want us to believe. Eventually recombinant DNA technology is going to solve the problem.
You trust Chinese stats more than US stats?
If you believe statistical materials from the 1880s I have a whole big bunch of bridges to sell you. The US government didn't even know how many people it had, to say nothing of how many were addicted to what.
201 posted on 06/03/2005 6:44:00 PM CDT by muawiyah (q)
"It's not as hopeless as you want us to believe. Eventually recombinant DNA technology is going to solve the problem."
That's your answer? Recombinant DNA will save us? Are we going to have the state manipulating our DNA for our own good? What other behaviors will recombinant DNA solve? Religiousness? Ambition? Desire for freedom? Unwillingness to be fodder for a super state. You have no answers, do you?
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.