Pubdate: Sun, 21 Jul 2013
Source: Minneapolis Star-Tribune (MN)
Copyright: 2013 Star Tribune
Contact: http://www.startribunecompany.com/143
Website: http://www.startribune.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/266
Author: Jason Lewis

NEXT UP ON SOCIAL AGENDA: MARIJUANA

(In which we ponder the nanny state and harm done.)

Minnesota legislators seem poised to follow the lead of 18 other
states by legalizing medicinal marijuana in the next legislative
session. While the effort is primarily a Democratic one, there is
Republican support as well. Nevertheless, lawmakers are up against the
same obstacle medical marijuana faced in 2009 - a reluctant governor.
Mark Dayton remains adamant, as was Tim Pawlenty before him, about
deferring to a powerful state interest whose support most politicians
covet: law enforcement. Indeed, the governor's spokesperson declared
in the waning days of the 2013 session that Dayton won't support any
legislation on the issue so long as groups like the Minnesota Police
and Peace Officers Association oppose it.

Of course, the governor might change his mind, we're told, "if
advocates are able to reach an agreement with law enforcement ..."
Well, now, there's a profile in courage.

Given all the talk of compassion coming from those in government these
days, the idea of denying terminally ill patients the only substance
they say brings relief from excruciating pain - placebo effect or not
- - seems absurd and more than a bit cruel.

Yet you can't pick up a press release from the Drug Enforcement
Agency, the White House drug czar or the Minnesota County Attorneys'
Association that doesn't include dire warnings about marijuana as a
"gateway" drug. Problem is, the proverbial pot smoker is less likely
to get hooked after one sitting than are those experimenting with any
number of other stimulants or sedatives. According to a 1990s National
Comorbidity Survey of 8,098 participants, the estimated percentage of
people who used marijuana at least once and became dependent was 9
percent - much lower than tobacco and alcohol.

Besides, we have de facto legalization now for far more dangerous
substances, and everyone knows it. They're called prescriptions.

The overall painkiller market totaled $9.4 billion in 2012, and there
were more deaths from overdoses of those substances than from heroin
and cocaine combined - notwithstanding the episodic high profile
celebrity death. The Centers for Disease Control said only this month
that the soaring number of overdoses was directly related to the large
number of prescriptions easily obtained.

Some will say this is hardly comforting evidence when it comes to
further decriminalizing drugs. And that pot smoking, especially at
younger ages, poses a real threat over time to the proper development
of cognitive functions, including the risk of psychosis.

Those concerns are real; abusing illicit drugs, like abusing alcohol,
is dangerous. That's why dividends from decriminalization for adults
should be used to keep these substances out of the hands of minors.

But if the failure of Prohibition (whose loudest supporters, such as
teetotaler John D. Rockefeller, eventually became its loudest
opponents) taught us anything, it's that banning a substance doesn't
make it go away. It merely drives it underground, making it far more
dangerous.

The risks in distributing any sort of contraband drive up its price
and profitability. The result has been an era of unspeakable violence
- - from Columbia to Mexico to America's inner cities - as cartels large
and small seek to protect their monopoly turf by any means necessary.

Mexico, our largest foreign supplier of marijuana, has seen 50,000
people brutally killed since 2006 - the year that country decided to
crack down on trafficking. It's a strategy that two former Mexican
presidents have publicly questioned, in no small part due to the
corruption of government officials paid to look the other way by
lethal cartels.

Those cartels have been given a monopoly on distribution in Mexico and
the United States as a direct result of both nations' misguided
policies. Whatever their faults, you simply do not see these kinds of
problems with legal substances, whether tobacco, alcohol, or
everyone's drug of choice, caffeine.

Unfortunately, logic hasn't stopped the Obama administration from
expanding its "partnership" with Mexico by sending billions in added
security assistance as part of the Merida Initiative's seemingly
futile battle against drug trafficking organizations. Most experts
agree that the latest head of the vicious Zeta cartel, captured last
week in dramatic fashion, will quickly be replaced by another. Nor has
the embarrassment of Operation Fast and Furious - the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives boondoggle that allowed
thousands of assault weapons to flow into the hands of Mexico's most
violent narco-terrorists - deterred our ardent law-and-order liberals.

If anything, the drug war seems to have emboldened the nanny state.
Because a few folks lack discretion in their various eating and
drinking habits, the neo-prohibitionist mayor of New York, Michael
Bloomberg, has decided to regulate everything from soda to salt for
the rest of us. Meanwhile, writes Reason's Greg Beato, "New York City
in 2012 experienced its first overall increase in major crimes in 20
years."

Liberals are banning tobacco displays and smoking in your own home or
car - and, in an uncharacteristic admission of how taxation changes
behavior, are slapping massive tax increases on cigarettes in the
hopes of discouraging consumption. The $1.60-per-pack hike that took
effect this month brings Minnesota's cigarette tax to $2.83 per pack,
sixth-highest in the nation.

In 2009, however, ATF officials estimated that states were already
losing as much as $5 billion per year in tobacco revenues due to
cigarette smuggling. The number is surely much higher now, because
ever-increasing levies (a more acceptable form of prohibition) are
encouraging more bootlegging. Naturally, state officials are stepping
up law enforcement efforts on black market buyers and sellers.

Of course, increased revenue is no reason to legalize marijuana -
though some say that motive was behind the reversal on Prohibition
during the Great Depression. Nevertheless, the foregone tax revenue
for Minnesota from keeping pot illegal amounts to $50 million
annually, says Harvard University economist Jeffrey Miron.

In fact, far from collecting revenue, public spending on drug
prohibition amounts to $41.3 billion annually nationwide ($88 billion
if you include foregone taxes), according to Miron's calculation in a
2010 white paper for the libertarian leaning Cato Institute. Of this,
$5.4 billion is spent on marijuana enforcement alone. Minnesota
expenditures attributed to its ban on pot total more than $89 million.

But war is the health of the state, and the war on drugs has created
some powerful governmental interests determined to keep it going. Put
another way, all of this money employs a lot of people who have little
interest in seeing their jobs vanish.

After all, it takes a lot of prison guards for America to lead the
world in the number of persons incarcerated, at 1.6 million. Hoover
Institution fellows Gary Becker and Kevin Murphy, writing in the Wall
Street Journal, estimate that about 50 percent of inmates in federal
prisons, as well as 20 percent in state prisons, are likely there for
a drug offense.

It's even worse for the unlucky innocents caught up in a drive-by
shooting or those subject to the Byzantine world of civil asset
forfeiture. Both federal and state law allow officials to seize
private property "associated" with or used to "facilitate" a drug
crime - without granting the due process normally accorded under
criminal sanctions. The statutes not only transfer the burden of proof
to the property owner in order to retrieve the assets, but
conveniently allow the "appropriate agency," usually the police
department, to keep most of the proceeds.

Ostensibly designed to nab the professional dealer, the forfeiture
laws have snared countless innocent bystanders who have not been
charged with wrongdoing but who may be running a hotel where drugs
happened to be used, or piloting a plane that has shuttled a courier,
among others, from here to there.

Those of us who believe the war on drugs has failed should also admit
that ending it is not a panacea. Substance abuse may rise (though
there is conflicting evidence, e.g., Portugal). And as California,
Washington, and Colorado are finding out, decriminalizing marijuana is
not without logistical problems. But can we not at least agree there
are two legitimate sides to the issue?

In the meantime, if someone's dying of cancer, we should probably
dispense with the lectures that smoking dope is bad for your health?
- ---
MAP posted-by: Matt