Posted on 06/06/2005 8:42:41 AM PDT by Che Chihuahua
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Or you can argue that the whiskey makers teamed up with innocent cheese and olive oil brokers.
(Thanks, by the way, for making my point for me. That's right neighborly of you.)
I'm sorry for your loss, but follow your own logic. What about people who had family members killed by a person using a gun. Taking your logic, you support the government banning guns. How is it different?
All that changed was the wholesalers took a whuppen from the federales. With the middlemen removed from the scene, folks like Capone could move ahead unhindered.
OK, so weed has some therapeutic value. Either make it a Schedule III drug for the drug companies to make or let RJ Reynolds and other tobacco companies recoup their losses from the dumb ass tobacco litigation and sell weed commercially. I'm guessing that your opposition to the WOD is limited to your personal (dare I say selfish) desire to enjoy weed. And I know that you wouldn't do anything dumb while stoned!
But would you also deny your brother heroin junkie or sister tweaker their desire to enjoy their "harmless" drug of choice. Of course, you'll always forgive them if they do something personally destructive to you or otherwise lets you down. Or will you become just another do-gooder when you get personally affected or hurt by someone that thinks they aren't hurting anyone else?
The big money was in distribution. When the government nannies stopped legal trade, they handed all of that nice, green money to folks like Capone. What a brilliant move! And now we're repeating that brilliance by giving money to people like bin Laden.
Someday you might be killed by a terrorist, but you can rest easy knowing that he couldn't score a spliff the night before he killed you.
How are any of us helped by these laws?
"Totally"? Far from it ... nobody said that. But anti-drug laws inflate the profitability of drugs and channel those profits into criminal hands. It may have felt good to say Al Capone was a nasty guy ... but it did more good to end Prohibition.
Yes, I know that there is a medicinal use for marijuana. However, it is still considered a Schedule I, D., (Hallucinogenic) drug. I posted previously, and it was ignored, that the feds should either make it a Schedule III drug (controlled use) and let the pharmaceutical companies make it for those who need it. Alternatively, let the tobacco companies make marijuana cigarettes, get the tax revenues and the so-called quality control that comes with standardization. We could even do both, so long as the plan of action for legalization is well thought out. This is hardly a "do-gooder" position. Because with legalization comes positive and negative consequences. Think about the dumb ass Mass judges that okayed gay marriage and forgot to consider the negative consequences of a gay divorce, e.g., who gets the adopted kids in a divorce? There's a case in Virginia about that issue now.
BTW, the poster-poseur was calling me a "do-gooder" without knowing the basis for my beliefs. S/he adamantly defended drug use, while piously and emphatically maintaining that s/he was not a drug user. My main gripe with the laissez-faire, pro-legalization libertarian argument is that it is an unreasoned, primarily emotional and self-centered approach, "My personal freedom, yadda, yadda, yadda." These arguments are much like those used by an adolescent when he tries to tell his parents to treat him like an adult without assuming the responsibilities.
Finally, Dr. Friedman's economic argument for legalization is based on a false assumption that government will save or wisely spend the money that would have gone to a wasteful program. Liberal-Marxists argued in the same vein in the 1970s about the space program and the Vietnam War. Did you see an end to poverty or any tax cut (until 1982) when we stopped "wasting money" on those budget items? Eliminating crime by simply making it an non-crime is doublethink at its worst. It also reminds one of a crooked Enron accountant cooking the books by creating phantom profits.
I support that idea.
My main gripe with the laissez-faire, pro-legalization libertarian argument is that it is an unreasoned, primarily emotional and self-centered approach
No, it is a principled approach, your sleazy ad hominems notwithstanding.
Dr. Friedman's economic argument for legalization is based on a false assumption that government will save or wisely spend the money that would have gone to a wasteful program.
Programs don't get more wasteful than those whose only "accomplishment" is imprisoning people who violated nobody's rights. I'd rather see the money go to food stamps or WIC; there are good arguments against them, but at least they put food in a belly instead of a person in prison.
Sorry, Miltie. Your John Hancock a'int worth $hit these days. Smoke pot and you will go to jail. It's the law, and it will not change.
You've provided no evidence that it does.
BTW, most courts and state jurisdictions have disagreed with your position on the basis that drug regulation is a part of governmental police powers concerning health and safety issues. My suggestion to you is to work to change the drug laws through political action. That approach seems to be working for gay activists.
No, it's quite accurately directed at you.
and somewhat defensive.
Yet another sleazy ad hominem.
You are in the best position to know if the "sleazy ad hominems" fit you or not.
They don't. Nor have you provided any reason to believe that they fit many legalization proponents.
If you are sincere in your beliefs that dope smoking is implicitly or explicitly a constitutionally protected activity, then more power to you.
It's "protected" by the Tenth Amendment limitations on federal authority.
BTW, most courts and state jurisdictions have disagreed with your position
Most courts have held that abortion is a "right." Most courts wouldn't know the Constitution if it bit them on the posterior.
You would have been correct in your accusation, if for example, I had only argued that dope shouldn't be legalized because I once saw a dirty hippie smoking it. But unlike you, I provided several reasons for my position. So if you could, please come up with any remotely viable arguments whenever you disagree with me. Your accusation is itself a "sleazy" ad hominem attack.
You also said that "...most courts wouldn't know the Constitution..." Well, apparently neither do you. Your Tenth Amendment "argument" in favor of marijuana is as overreaching as the so-called "penumbra doctrine" used to justify abortion as a "right." If you're an "originalist" as you seem to me to be representing yourself, do you reasonably believe that Founding Fathers understood and intended a "right" to get stoned? It would be reasonable to conclude such an implicit understanding and intent as far as alcohol is concerned.
From ancient times, alcohol has almost always been legal and accepted in most cultures, religions, and nations. It has also been widely accepted and used by the general public for reasons other than the purely recreational use that you have advocated thus far. Apart from some Native American religious use, most hallucinogens are not condoned in this country or most other countries. In this broad context, your pro-legalization "arguments" seem too frivolous to rise to the level of a fundamental "constitutional right" like free speech or due process.
As I said, most state legislatures, federal and state courts, and public opinion, for now, do not support your pot legalization position. If the public truly supported it, then it would be legal, e.g., public sentiment ended Prohibition. So why don't you go and do something constructive and become an activist if this issue is of such burning "Constitutional" importance to you?
ad hom·i·nem, adj.
Appealing to personal considerations rather than to logic or reason
Nothing in the definition supports your claim that an ad hominem argument ceases to be one if uttered in conjunction with a non-ad hominem argument.
So if you could, please come up with any remotely viable arguments whenever you disagree with me.
Already done in my first post to you: "[the laissez-faire, pro-legalization libertarian argument] is a principled approach" and "Programs don't get more wasteful than those whose only "accomplishment" is imprisoning people who violated nobody's rights. I'd rather see the money go to food stamps or WIC; there are good arguments against them, but at least they put food in a belly instead of a person in prison."
do you reasonably believe that Founding Fathers understood and intended a "right" to get stoned?
It is clear that they intended no federal involvement in the question.
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