Legalization of drugs can cure economy
Comments
by Joseph Watts on April 30, 2009 at 4:00 am under Opinion
Drugs should be sold in stores, like your local grocery store. Oh wait, they already are. You just need a note from your doctor for the ones behind the counter, or an ID for the booze and smokes. But I want to go further than that: Grocery stores should carry drugs of every variety. Not just marijuana, but cocaine, heroin, acid, etc.
The legalization of illicit narcotics is imperative. To do so would save the United States billions of dollars, while creating profits and saving lives. Let’s attack this issue philosophically, and then I’ll tell you what matters most — how much this War on Drugs has cost in lives and in money. No government has any right to tell you what you may or may not consume simply because they think it’s bad. If that were the case, cigarettes, liquor and most of the food we eat would be illegal.
An important economic factor is the monetary value of legalizing drugs. More than $400 billion has been spent fighting the War on Drugs since the 1970s. The current prohibition on narcotics simply isn’t working.
The destruction of drug fields in Central and South America, carried out by the United States, only gives birth to new fields elsewhere — and it dramatically increases the price of the drugs when sold and the profits made. Jeffrey A. Miron estimates that legalizing narcotics would (through money being saved and profit from sales) boost the economy with as much as $76 billion a year. That sounds, to me at least, like quite the cure for our economic woes. Drugs can play the role alcohol played in the ‘30s. And not everyone in the world is an alcoholic now, are they?
The War on Drugs (Prohibition started in the early 20th century) as declared by President Nixon costs more lives than it saves. Last year alone, more than 6,000 Mexicans died due to drug-related violence in Mexico and on the U.S. border. This war gives rise to massive drug cartels that bribe Mexican and American politicians and police forces to effectively traffic in drugs.
The sad results of this war are wasteful spending and, infinitely more important, the loss of innocent life and liberty. Aside from those who have perished from this misguided war, more than half of American federal prison inmates are non-violent drug offenders, guilty only of possession or intent to sell.
In short, the United States needs to end its failing War on Drugs. We need to legalize, tax and sell narcotics. Then, we need to take the money saved, and what is earned, and funnel it into the areas of our economy that are suffering from massive cutbacks, such as the education system, social programs and the like.
6 Comments
My personal opinion is that unprocessed herbs (cannabis flowers, coca leaves, poppy heads, ephedra, magic mushrooms) should be sold in stores, while synthesized or heavily processed drugs (heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, etc.) should be quite a bit more regulated, but still available to those who seek them.
The counter-productive war on drugs starts and ends in the United States Congress. There is currently a bill in the senate, S-714, by virginia Senator Jim Webb, that will create a national criminal justice commission to look at the failures of American criminal justice policy. Including the failed war on drugs. The legislation needs as many co-sponsors as it can get. It has 25 thus far. If you want drug policy reform then please consider contacting your senators and admonishing them to support S-714.
Senator Webb has said that everything is on the table with this legislation. Including marijuana legalization. Now is the time and this is the legislation that can significantly change the atrocity that is the war on drugs.
S-714 http://mysite.verizon.net/aahpat/aandc/s714.htm
S-714 tally sheet of co-sponsors: http://mysite.verizon.net/aahpat/aandc/s-714_tally.htm
Sen. Webbs latest assertions on the bill: http://drugwartreason.blogspot.com/2009/04/marijuana-legalization-is-on-table.html
Outstanding! Re-legalization is the only way to win the “War on Drugs” and it is as inevitable as the end of alcohol prohibition was to FDR in 1932/33. We need to get on with it. It has destroyed more black families than anything since welfare. It is just a reinstatement of slavery in the US today. Some of the best information on this subject is available at leap.cc The organization is Law Enforcement Against Prohibition and it is growing rapidly.
Thank you for your astute article.
Donald Sheldon
Debaters debate the two wars as if Nixon’s civil war on Woodstock Nation did not yet run amok. The persecution of the half-a-million strong hippies assembled in August 1969 can’t be good for America, the world-leader in percentile behind bars. Madam Secretary Clinton need not travel to Tibet to find a minority subculture stripped of human rights. If we are all about spreading liberty abroad, then why mix the message at home? Peace on the home front would enhance credibility.
Stop throwing good money after bad. The witch-hunt doctor’s Rx is for every bust to numerate a bigger tax-load over a smaller denominator of payers. Spend more on prisons than on schools. My shaman’s second opinion is homegrown herbal remedy. Consumer dollars can stimulate the economy better if they aren’t depleted by prohibition’s black market.
Only a clause about interstate commerce provides a shred of constitutionality. The commerce policy on the number-one cash crop in the land is no taxation; yes eradication. But money to frustrate enforcement grows on trees. Did the authors of the Constitution intend to divert the Treasury’s natural revenue to Mexican cartels? America rejected prohibition, but its back. Swat teams don’t seem to need no stinking amendment.
The demonized substances never had their day in court. Nixon promised to supply supporting evidence later. Later, the Commission evidence didn’t support, but no matter. The witch-hunt was on. No amendments can assure due-process under an anti-science law that never had any due-process itself. Science hailed LSD as a drug with breakthrough potential, until the CSA (Controlled Substances Act of 1970) halted all research. Marijuana has no medical use, period. Lives are flushed down expensive tubes.
The RFRA (Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993) allows Native American Church members to eat peyote. A specific church membership should not be prerequisite for Americans to obtain their birthright freedom of religion. Denial of entheogen sacrament to any American, for mediation of communion twixt the soul and the source of souls, violates the First Amendment.
Freedom of speech presupposes freedom of thought. The Constitution doesn’t enumerate any governmental power to embargo diverse states of mind. How and when did government usurp this power to coerce conformity? Legislators who would limit cognitive liberty lack jurisdiction.
Common Law must hold that the people are the legal owners of their own bodies. Socrates says, know your self. Mortal law should not presume to thwart the intelligent design that molecular keys unlock spiritual doors. Those who appreciate their own free choice of personal path in life should not deny self-exploration to seekers. The right to the pursuit of happiness is supposed to be inalienable by government.
Simple majorities in each house could put repeal of the CSA on the president’s desk. The books have ample law on them without the CSA. Americans are already liable for damages when they screw-up. The usual caveats remain in effect. Strong medicine requires prescription. Employees can be fired for poor job performance. No harm, no foul; and no excuse, either. Replace the war on drugs with a frugal, constitutional, science-based drugs policy.
Your comment “No government has any right to tell you what you may or may not consume simply because they think it’s bad.” is certainly correct. However, the Government does have every right to regulate our actions, if they are harmful to others. Therefore, the drugs currently illegal are not illegal for the same reasons as other illegal activities, but certainly for the same purpose, to protect the citizens.
Cigarettes are damaging to your health. However, that is a personal choice. When cigarette smoke becomes a danger to others, laws intercede. Laws that provide special marked places for smoking give everyone a choice whether or not to enter said place, which gives individuals the choice to be exposed to secondhand smoke.
Drunken and Disorderly conduct is the same way. If someone doesn’t want to be exposed to alcohol, they have the clear choice not to enter a bar, or a restaurant that serves it. The law aspect comes into affect when the dangers of alcohol leaves these controlled places. This is why drinking and driving is illegal.
My point is, drugs such as Methamphetamine, Cocaine, Acid, and Marijuana are dangerous to the body. Just like cigarettes are, and alcohol has the potential to. However, these two are regulated. There are laws in place to protect those who do not want to be exposed to such. If illegal drugs were legalized, the cost to regulate these, and protect those who do not want to be exposed to the danger, would only add to current economic problems, rather than solve, or help them in any way.
Ben, I know it has been a while, so you will probably never read this. However, I must insist that if you do, you read the EPA report on second hand smoke and then tell me if you think the laws were enacted to protect people or to further political careers. Also, I would like to point out that the pittance spent on regulating narcotics would in no way, ever, by any means come close to the money we spend now on the war on drugs, not to mention the revenue the government would make from taxation of such substances.