Pubdate: Thu, 31 Jul 2014
Source: Washington Examiner (DC)
Copyright: 2014 Washington Examiner
Contact:  http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3788
Author: Steve Chapman
Note: STEVE CHAPMAN, a Washington Examiner columnist, blogs daily for the
Chicago Tribune and is nationally syndicated by Creators Syndicate.
Note: Editorial Series
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/07/27/opinion/sunday/high-time-marijuana-legalization.html 

BAD POLICIES ARE THEIR OWN WORST ENEMY

Topics: The New York Times Marijuana Drug Legalization Legalization

Employees prepare for opening day at the Cannabis City retail
marijuana store on July 8, 2014 in... Newspaper editorials rarely make
news - I've been writing them for a long time, and, believe me, I know
- - but one did the other day, when the New York Times came out for
legalization of marijuana. It was an agreeable development for anyone
who, like me, believes in letting people live their own lives, even if
they do it badly. But its significance is much bigger than that.

The Times is not exactly at the vanguard of history here. With all
modesty, I will note that I wrote my first column arguing against pot
prohibition in 1982, when the Washington Nationals were the Montreal
Expos, Starbucks was confined to Seattle and I had a full head of
hair. The question is not why the Times editorial endorsed the change,
but why it took so long.

Sign Up for the Politics Today newsletter! Still, it's a big deal, and
Tony Newman of the Drug Policy Alliance explained why. For all its
liberal reputation, "the Times did as much as any other media outlet
to legitimize drug war hysteria and its disastrous policies," he wrote
in the Huffington Post. "The most powerful news outlet in the world
coming on board, with the passion they did, should speed up an exit
strategy from this long-lost war."

The Times' new policy highlights how much opinion on the issue has
shifted on the legal sale and use of cannabis. Some 58 percent of
Americans now favor it - compared to 34 percent in 2003. Two states,
Washington and Colorado, have done it. The issue will go to the voters
in Oregon and Alaska in November.

But this national shift is not heartening merely because it promises
to reverse a policy that has been an extravagant failure. More
important, it confirms that in the realm of government, Americans have
the capacity to recognize mistakes and stop making them. Too many
people know too much about pot to go on mindlessly banning it.

Bad policies, it turns out, are their own worst enemy. This is often
hard to believe while those policies are in effect. The drug war began
in the 1960s and isn't over yet. But experience is an unsurpassed instructor.

That's how Americans came to see the dangers of letting the government
set prices: They lived through the 1970s, when inflation reached
double digits and consumers encountered painful shortages of basic
goods - gasoline, beef, lumber, even paper bags. Federal price
controls not only fostered economic chaos, but failed to contain
inflation, which was their whole point.

The public and the policymakers eventually came to understand that
inflation was the result of the Federal Reserve's monetary policy
rather than corporate greed. It also dawned on them that government
price-fixing was a fool's errand.

When President Ronald Reagan lifted controls on gasoline in 1981, most
people expected pump prices to go higher and stay there. In practice,
they rose over the first year and then began falling. At the end of
his eight-year presidency, they were down by more than one-fourth from
where they were at the start. (Inflation fell as well.)

Nowadays, when gasoline prices jump, price controls are off the table.
That's not because oil companies have gotten more lovable; it's
because the public has gotten harder to fool.

Experience also prompted Americans to reassess their objections to
same-sex marriage. For a long time, it was seen as a radical fantasy.
In 1996, only 27 percent of Americans supported it.

But the world changed. Gays grew more open about their sexual
orientation. Same-sex couples became more common. In 2004,
Massachusetts allowed gay and lesbian couples to wed, and in 2008,
Connecticut followed. Other states let them enter into civil unions
that approximate marriage.

Opponents predicted disastrous effects. But the Almighty did not send
a plague of frogs or otherwise evince outrage. The more exposure
Americans had to the notion of gay marriage, the less they minded.
Today, it has the support of 55 percent of Americans.

The trial-and-error mode of education even works in foreign affairs.
Vietnam showed Americans the danger of fighting a large
counterinsurgency war in a distant place - for nearly 40 years, we
shied away from such ventures. The occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan
have been strong doses of aversion therapy.

Most people don't spend much time thinking about government policies,
which is why bad ones can persist for years or decades. But if the
process of education is long, it bends toward wisdom.

STEVE CHAPMAN, a Washington Examiner columnist, blogs daily for the
Chicago Tribune and is nationally syndicated by Creators Syndicate. 
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D