Pubdate: Tue, 06 Dec 2011
Source: Spokesman-Review (Spokane, WA)
Copyright: 2011 The Spokesman-Review
Contact:  http://www.spokesman.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/417
Author: Mona Charen
Note: Mona Charen is a columnist for Creators Syndicate.

DRUG WAR NOT WORTH PRICE

Five years ago last month, Milton Friedman died at age 94. To the 
very end, the Nobel Prize-winning economist was astute, tireless and 
wonderfully avuncular. Thanks to the Internet, his commentaries on 
subjects ranging from greed to slavery to the Great Depression myth 
and many other topics can be enjoyed forever.

Of course, great thinkers have been recording their thoughts in books 
for millennia. And Friedman was no exception. But there's no denying 
the immediacy and intimacy of video. Wouldn't we have loved to click 
on Edmund Burke, Alexander Hamilton or Cicero and watch them talk 
about their ideas? If you do dip into the Friedman oeuvre, start with 
his exchange with Phil Donahue!

Nothing would be easier than to invoke the great Friedman as the sage 
of limited government. He was certainly that. If he were commenting 
on America's current predicament, he would doubtless prescribe a 
radically smaller public sector.

But Friedman poses challenges to conservatives as well as liberals. 
He opposed, for example, the war on drugs. That's right. Friedman was 
for legalization of all drugs, not just marijuana.

It's a position embraced by only one candidate for president, Ron 
Paul. Rep. Paul holds some ludicrous views. He seems to believe, for 
example, that if we were just nicer to the Iranians, we wouldn't need 
to fret about their acquisition of nuclear weapons. Still, Paul 
deserves full credit for endorsing drug legalization. Friedman would approve.

Governments in the United States, federal and state, spend an 
estimated $41.3 billion annually to prevent people from ingesting 
substances we deem harmful, though many unsafe ingestibles  you know 
the list  remain legal. Half of all federal prisoners are serving 
sentences for drug offenses, along with 20 percent of state prisoners.

In 2009, there were 1.7 million drug arrests in the United States. 
Half of those were for marijuana. As David Boaz and Timothy Lynch of 
the Cato Institute noted, "Addicts commit crimes to pay for a habit 
that would be easily affordable if it were legal. Police sources have 
estimated that as much as half the property crime in some major 
cities is committed by drug users."

Drug money, such as booze money during Prohibition, has corrupted 
countless police, Drug Enforcement Administration agents, Border 
Patrol agents, prosecutors and judges. Drug crime has blighted many 
neighborhoods. America's appetite for drugs has encouraged 
lawlessness and violence in many neighboring countries, most recently 
in Mexico, where its drug violence is spilling north.

Because illegal drugs are unregulated, their purity is unknowable 
accounting for thousands of overdose deaths and injuries. Since we 
maintain drug prohibition to protect people from their own foolish 
decisions, those overdose deaths must weigh in the balance, too.

Drug prohibition, Friedman pointed out, keeps the price of drugs 
artificially inflated and amounts to a favor by the government to the 
drug lords. "The role of the government is to protect the drug 
cartels," as he provocatively phrased it. Due to our interdiction 
efforts, Friedman explained, it's enormously costly for a small 
competitor to attempt to import drugs. This ensures that only the big 
operators with large fleets of planes, heavy weapons, etc., can compete.

Prohibition makes it unnecessarily cumbersome for cancer patients and 
others to receive painkillers and other drugs. A misplaced fear of 
addiction sometimes leads doctors and other health care providers to 
underprescribe pain medicine. Meanwhile, any high schooler can score 
whatever drugs he wants on the way to gym class.

Harvard economics professor Jeffrey Miron estimates that if drugs 
were legal and taxed, the U.S. and state treasuries would receive 
$46.7 billion in added revenue while saving $41.3 billion in expenditures.

What is the downside to legalization? Friedman acknowledged the 
possibility that legalization might result in some increase in drug 
addiction. There was, after all, an uptick in alcoholism after 
Prohibition was repealed. But not all victims are created equal. The 
child, Friedman notes, who is killed in a drive-by shootout between 
drug gangs is a total victim. The adult who decides to take drugs is not.

Let's stipulate that some unknown number of Americans will become 
addicts after legalization who otherwise would not have. We must ask 
whether the terrible price we are now paying - in police costs, 
international drug control efforts, border security, foregone tax 
revenue, overdose deaths, corruption and violence - is worth it.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom