Marijuana Prohibitionists Don?t Take Their Own Flawed Statistics Seriously
Via a socially conservative friend, I received this Op-Ed by Kevin Sabet arguing against pot legalization. In support of his thesis that ?the price of legalizing pot is too high?, he points to these statistics:
Accidents would increase, healthcare costs would rise and productivity would suffer. Legal alcohol serves as a good example: The $8 billion in tax revenue generated from that widely used drug does little to offset the nearly $200 billion in social costs attributed to its use.
Let?s ignore for today the problematic use of alcohol statistics to predict the effects of marijuana use. But if alcohol is such a dehabilitating drug, why don?t we accept the wisdom of alcohol prohibition? Sabet doesn?t so much as hint that a return to prohibition would be desirable. My friend who forwarded me the article was also opposed to the idea (?But I like drinking alcohol,? he explained).
But still, $200 billion dollars is a lot of money. What?s the breakdown of that cost? Apparently 14% is for health care, 13% is law-enforcement expenditures, and the remaining 73% is [a particular breed of male cow dung].
Or ?lost productivity?, to be exact. I can?t be troubled to look up exactly how the government imagines together this figure, but I assume that it represents more or less the lost work-force participation or reduced efficiency of those who consume drugs.
You might as well complain about the ?lost productivity? caused by workers taking unpayed vacations. If workers prefer vacation to longer hours, it is because they prefer the utility of the vacation to the utility of the extra wages. Drugs are no different. If we (somehow costlessly) forced people not to consume alcohol, the wages they would gain from their renewed productivity just wouldn?t be ?worth? as much to them. Or else why do people naturally prefer the alcohol?
So $200 billion is not a high enough cost for Kevin Sabet to even tentatively suggest alcohol prohibition. Subtract out the bullshit, and the figure is a lot closer to $50 billion. If the imaginary costs of drugs don?t justify prohibition, the smaller real costs don?t either. Nor do such carelessly unconsidered arguments justify pot prohibition.
-wallace
My concern for the legalization of drugs has always been two fold. On one hand as a conservative libertarian, the libertarian side of me feels that individuals should have the right to behave and operate their person in any way that they see fit as long as it does not harm or infringe on the rights of others. That being said my concern for drug legalization is not those that choose to use them inside their homes on their private property. But how they effect others when used in public places. And how one would police this if it was only legalized for private in home use. Is there an immediate test to determine public intoxication or DWI for those that choose to cross the line and put them selves in situations that could harm others? It doesn’t appear there is.
My second concern is will marijuana become a gateway drug for legalization of all drugs? We can see how nations like Denmark have seen negative consequences for the legalization of more explicit drug use. Is it in the best interest of non-drug users to want to live in a society where there is a constant risk to life or prosperity by open elicit drug use? Probably not. But we can’t immediately infringe rights of those who desire to do something based on the feelings of those that choose not to either.
Obviously based on previous posts my attitude toward regulation is unfavorable. But I can’t see how this “market” could exist without regulation.
Based on that, I’d be interested in knowing the real life models of how marijuana legalization would look, how it would be regulated, and how enforcement would behave. Until then, I will hold my final verdict on the issue.
Well, to be totally honest it is difficult to advocate the continued consumption of alcohol and cigerettes, while at the same time advocating for a continued prohibition of marijuana based on similar grounds. I have pretty much come to terms in my own mind that I am partly hypocritical for doing so. I guess acknowledgement is the first step right?
The true object of my disdain remains so long as marijuana continues to be illegal, unfortunately. I have found libertarianism to be all too fond of that other word which stems from “liberty”: libertine. I understand that people want to fight the laws which circumscribe the usage of drugs, and many times they bring up good points (as Mr. Sabet does here). Much of libertarianism fosters within its younger ranks, a disdain for government and laws (whether they are just or unjust) and have developed a sense of entitelment that becuase they have deemed such laws as nugatory, they find no need to abide by them if they can get away with it. College campuses are rife with this sentiment, and nothing elicits disgust from me more than the knowledge that much of marijuana is grown and imported into the US, and that families are ruined and father murdered in front of their children because of this industry. I sometimes wonder whether the argument to legalize marijuana is morally based on the hope that with legalization, the organizations (inside and outside the US) that deal with the crop and terrorize countries and cities, will be “regulated” into extinction and people can consume without the burden of guilt. Did I drink before I turned 21? You betcha. Was that me breaking a law because of my subjective view of its legitimacy? Quite possibly, well, I have been raised that if you can die for your country and vote an inarticulate baffoon into office to run government/car companies/banks, then you should be able to drink. HOWEVER, my purchasing beer did not go toward an institution (or several) that accounts for institutional killings and the degredation of societies and cultures (unless they chose to with their own over-consumption).
Secondly, I find it difficult to lay the foundation of an argument to legalize something by comparing it to other things that are not good for your body or society. “Well, people die from shootings. And stabbings don’t kill people as shooting does. Therefore, we should be allowed to stab too.” There are better arguments to be had than “but he’s doing it” as in “but alcohol’s legal and cigerettes.” I just find this point to be lacking in true logical depth.
Finally, I am aware of all of the research stating that “marijuana is a) not a gateway drug and b) not addictive.” I disagree. I have seen marijuana do irrevocable damage to how some of my friends operate, and I have seen that many of my friends who smoke marijuana tend to take just one more step toward other things. Hell, I know people who come from middle-class families, go to college, and receive food stamps so that they can keep their money to buy pot. Apparently, one cannot play Madden without it.
I have to agree with Nick, the verdict is still out for me. I believe we can legalize marijuana for medical purposes and keep it at that, without having to legalize it for all. I can see that someone undergoing the ravishing effects of chemotherapy might need weed; I don’t see why someone can’t go to an OAR concert without it though.
It is of course true that we need to have laws that punish those who use their freedom in ways that actually harm other people. But it is a far leap from the simple observation that “people may use their freedom in harmful ways” to an “I Robot” like conclusion that “therefore we need to take away freedom”. The obvious flaw in this type of reasoning is that it considers the harm of allowing freedom, but not the harm embodied in the loss of freedom itself.
So. How do we make sure that people are held accountable? We already do, of course. Query why current laws are insufficient. If someone commits manslaughter under the influence of marijuana, they are liable to the charge of manslaughter. If they destroy property, they are liable for the destroyed property. Do drugs make law violations more likely? I’m not sure, but if they did, they would also make the pre-existing penalties more likely. The penalties of law are self-scaling to the likeliness of their violation.
What about those harmed by marijuana usage? One straightforward way to redistribute wealth from those who impose risk through marijuana use to those who do not is to put a tax on marijuana. Lower taxes evenly across the rest of the population in proportion to the gain from marijuana taxes, and you have forced marijuana users to “pay a toll” to the abstinent population for the risk they impose on them. Alcohol taxes and gas taxes serve much the same purposes.
Nor do I particularly desire only a partial legalization. The fact that there may be no instantaneous diagnosis of marijuana intoxication is not particularly terrible. After all, alcohol legalization was never contingent on the invention of portable breathalyzers. Nor do breathalyzers enforce drunk-driving laws by themselves: police have to see someone driving dangerously or acting violently in order to respond to drunken behavior. Pot-driven risks would be policed in the same ways.
The greatest danger is that we legalize marijuana consumption in homes without generally legalizing marijuana sales. We do not want a “worst of all worlds” scenario with high consumption, a vital, still-violent black market, and an invasive police force that continues to substantially harass and restrict people’s freedoms. We should prefer a *very permissive* marijuana legalization regime (such as those surrounding alcohol and tobacco, to the extent that they can be called “permissive”) to the “slightly permissive” regime that is commonly advocated – where only consumption, but not production or sale, is legalized.