The latest best estimate of over-policing is even on the conservative side
The War on Pot: America's $42 Billion Annual Boondoggle
| We abridge with permission this article by Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, DC, posted October 9, 2007 at AlterNet of the Independent Media Institute. |
What would you buy if you had an extra $42 billion to spend every year? What might our government buy if it suddenly had that much money dropped onto its lap every year?
For one thing, it might use all $42 billion for a massive tax cut that would put an extra $140 in the pockets of every person in the country -- $560 for a family of four.
Why $42 billion? Because that's what our current marijuana laws cost American taxpayers each year, according to a new study by researcher Jon Gettman, Ph.D. -- $10.7 billion in direct law enforcement costs, and $31.1 billion in lost tax revenues. And that may be an underestimate, at least on the law enforcement side, since Gettman made his calculations before the FBI released its latest arrest statistics in late September. The new FBI stats show an all-time record 829,627 marijuana arrests in 2006, 43,000 more than in 2005.
That's like arresting every man, woman and child in the state of North Dakota plus every man, woman, and child in Des Moines, Iowa on marijuana charges ... every year. Arrests for marijuana possession -- not sales or trafficking, just possession -- totaled 738,916. By comparison, there were 611,523 arrests last year for all violent crimes combined.
Basing his calculations mainly on U.S. government statistics, Gettman concludes that marijuana in the U.S. is a $113 billion dollar business. That's a huge chunk of economic activity that is unregulated and untaxed because it's almost entirely off the books.
Of course, the cost of our marijuana laws goes far beyond lost tax revenues and money spent on law enforcement. By consigning a very popular product -- one that's been used by about 100 million Americans, according to government surveys -- to the criminal underground, we've effectively cut legitimate businesspeople out of the market and handed a monopoly to criminals and gangs.
Strangely, government officials love to warn us that some unsavory characters profit off of marijuana sales, while ignoring the obvious: Our prohibitionist laws handed them the marijuana business in the first place, effectively giving marijuana dealers a $113 billion free ride.
All this might make some sense if marijuana were so terribly dangerous that it needed to be banned at all costs, but science long ago came to precisely the opposite conclusion. Compared to alcohol, for example, marijuana is astonishingly safe.
- * For one thing, marijuana is much less addictive than alcohol, with just nine percent of users becoming dependent, as opposed to 15 percent for booze.
* And marijuana is much less toxic. Heavy drinking is well-documented to damage the brain and liver, and to increase the risk of many types of cancer. Marijuana, on the other hand, has never caused a medically documented overdose death, and scientists are still debating whether even heavy marijuana use causes any permanent harm at all.
* And then there's violence. Again, the scientific findings are overwhelming: Booze incites violence and aggression; marijuana doesn't.
Despite all that, we now arrest one American every 38 seconds on marijuana charges. And we do so at a staggering cost in law enforcement expenses, lost tax revenues, and staggering profits for criminal gangs.
The alternative is clear: Regulate marijuana just as we do beer, wine, and liquor. The only thing lacking is the political will.
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JJS: While I'm not a big fan of marijuana or alcohol or mood alterants in general, it worries me making escape a police problem, especially now with the state becoming more heavy-handed, planting chips in people, torturing prisoners, accepting rigged elections as legit. That sort of state can too easily bend drug law to political purposes.
Also, let's ask what people are escaping from and if government can help make society something those drawn to "getting high" would want to stay in, improve, and benefit from -- by delivering to us economic justice, a task closer than drug law enforcement to the raison d'etre of government.
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Jeffery J. Smith runs the Forum on Geonomics.
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Also see: Marijuana Dealers Offer State of California One Billion Dollars
Medical Marijuana Case Shows Court At Its Worst
Pro-Democracy, Pro-Freedom Ballot Measures |
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