Pubdate: Fri, 20 Apr 2012
Source: Forbes Magazine (US)
Copyright: 2012 Forbes Inc.
Contact:  http://www.forbes.com/forbes/current/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/769
Author: Art Cardon

LET'S BE BLUNT: IT'S TIME TO END THE DRUG WAR

DENVER - APRIL 20: A woman passes a joint at a pro-marijuana '4/20'
celebration in front of the state capitol building April 20, 2010 in
Denver, Colorado. April 20th has become a de facto holiday for
marijuana advocates, with large gatherings and 'smoke outs' in many
parts of the United States. Colorado, one of 14 states to allow use of
medical marijuana, has experienced an explosion in marijuana
dispensaries, trade shows and related businesses in the last year as
marijuana use has become more mainstream. (Image credit: Getty Images
North America via April 20 is the counter-culture "holiday" on which lots and lots of
people come together to advocate marijuana legalization (or just get
high). Should drugs-especially marijuana-be legal?

The answer is "yes." Immediately. Without hesitation. Do not pass Go.
Do not collect $200 seized in a civil asset forfeiture. The war on
drugs has been a dismal failure. It's high time to end prohibition.
Even if you aren't willing to go whole-hog and legalize all drugs, at
the very least we should legalize marijuana.

For the sake of the argument, let's go ahead and assume that
everything you've heard about the dangers of drugs is completely true.
That probably means that using drugs is a terrible idea. It doesn't
mean, however, that the drug war is a good idea.

Prohibition is a textbook example of a policy with negative unintended
consequences. Literally: it's an example in the textbook I use in my
introductory economics classes (Cowen and Tabarrok, Modern Principles of
Economics if you're curious) and in the most popular introductory
economics textbook in the world (by N. Gregory Mankiw).The demand curve
for drugs is extremely inelastic, meaning that people don't change their
drug consumption very much in response to changes in prices.

Therefore, vigorous enforcement means higher prices and higher
revenues for drug dealers. In fact, I'll defer to Cowen and
Tabarrok-page 60 of the first edition, if you're still curious-for a
discussion of the basic economic logic:

The more effective prohibition is at raising costs, the greater are
drug industry revenues.

So, more effective prohibition means that drug sellers have more money
to buy guns, pay bribes, fund the dealers, and even research and
develop new technologies in drug delivery (like crack cocaine). It's
hard to beat an enemy that gets stronger the more you strike against
him or her.

People associate the drug trade with crime and violence; indeed, the
newspapers occasionally feature stories about drug kingpins doing
horrifying things to underlings and competitors. These aren't caused
by the drugs themselves but from the fact that they are illegal (which
means the market is underground) and addictive (which means demanders
aren't very price sensitive).

Those same newspapers will also occasionally feature articles about
how this or that major dealer has been taken down or about how this or
that quantity of drugs was taken off the streets.

Apparently we're to take from this the idea that we're going to "win"
the war on drugs. Apparently. It's alleged that this is only a step
toward getting "Mister Big," but even if the government gets "Mister
Big," it's not going to matter. Apple didn't disappear after Steve
Jobs died. Getting "Mr. Big" won't win the drug war. As I pointed out
almost a year ago, economist and drug policy expert Jeffrey Miron
estimates that we would have a lot less violence without a war on drugs.

At the recent Association of Private Enterprise Education conference,
David Henderson from the Naval Postgraduate School pointed out the
myriad ways in which government promises to make us safer in fact
imperil our safety and security.

The drug war is an obvious example: in the name of making us safer and
protecting us from drugs, we are actually put in greater danger.

Without meaning to, the drug warriors have turned American cities into
war zones and eroded the very freedoms we hold dear.

Freedom of contract has been abridged in the name of keeping us "safe"
from drugs.

Private property is less secure because it can be seized if it is
implicated in a drug crime (this also flushes the doctrine of
"innocent until proven guilty" out the window). The drug war has been
used as a pretext for clamping down on immigration. Not surprisingly,
the drug war has turned some of our neighborhoods into war zones.

We are warehousing productive young people in prisons at an alarming
rate all in the name of a war that cannot be won.

Albert Einstein is reported to have said that the definition of
insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting
different results. By this definition, the drug war is insane.

We are no safer, and we are certainly less free because of concerted
efforts to wage war on drugs.

It's time to stop the insanity and end prohibition.
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MAP posted-by: Matt