December 10, 2010 – The drug war has cost Americans over one trillion tax dollars, of that more money has been spent on marijuana crimes than any other drug including methamphetamine, heroin, or cocaine. The lost productivity of the millions of working tax payers devastated, and rendered unemployable, after being convicted of a marijuana crime is costing us billions more. Many who were economic assets have now become economic liabilities of the state — sometimes for life. When the economics and crime considerations created by prohibition are calculated, the true cost of the war on marijuana is astronomical.

Last year over 700,000 Americans were prosecuted for marijuana crimes in the United States, the vast majority for possession. Most of the Americans arrested for marijuana have jobs, pay taxes, and function well in society. After being convicted, many can no longer find good jobs or contribute to the economy or society in the ways they could have. What do you think they will do when faced with survival? Many will be forced onto the rolls of social programs, and others will turn to crime. The war on marijuana is actually creating more of the very problems (and criminals) Americans are so concerned about. Give an American a good job and some hope, and you will find you have less crime, fewer people on public assistance, and you will expand your tax base. It really is not that hard to understand.

The war on marijuana is a civil war with one faction imposing its will at gun point and great cost on the other. You do not have to approve of drug use, to see this is worse than the marijuana. There is more marijuana, it is stronger, and it is cheaper than ever. Furthermore, anyone — even kids — can get it right now. That is the reality of marijuana prohibition. Regulation, and honest education is better.

What have you got for your trillion dollars? For 10% of what it now costs in tax dollars to wage the war on marijuana, you could get a much better result. When you add the benefit of productive Americans instead of economic liabilities, I believe you will get more than your 10% investment back, in taxes and consumer spending.

If drugs were legal would you run out and do them? Most people would not. People who want to use drugs can get them very easily right now

Drug-fueled violence is escalating around the world, Mexico being a prime example. The drug war has made a health issue into a huge criminal problem. We have over 2 million Americans in prison now, that is 6 times the world median. We have 5% of the world’s population with 25% of the world’s prisoners. A great many are non violent drug offenders. People who use marijuana do not belong in prison and we can not afford to put them there.

No one has ever died from an overdose of Marijuana. Alcohol related disease killed 150,000 Americans last year, and tobacco 450,000. Contrast that to marijuana which is actually used to treat many illnesses. Marijuana is used medically in fourteen states, and the District of Columbia. Even the federal government has a medical marijuana program. The destructiveness of current policy is obvious, spending countless billions for that policy is something Americans simply can no longer afford, particularly when it just doesn’t work.

Open your eyes and your mind, help unite Americans. Marijuana prohibition is an ongoing problem, has failed, and is destructive to Americans and America. If you see marijuana as a problem it is clearly a health problem not a criminal one. Help your brother instead of destroying him — you may just need him and you can help put the country back on the economic track needed today more than ever.

Make no mistake: prohibition is profit driven, but not just for dealers and organized crime. The prison industrial complex, the pharmaceutical industry and law enforcement all depend on the drug war. They reap billions of dollars from it, money that would be better spent on infrastructure and education. Politicians cannot throw enough of your money away on the war against marijuana. This has been going on for so long that the raw data is there for all to see. The numbers and results speak for themselves.

Let me say it again: what have you got for your trillion dollars?…any questions?

For more on the economic impacts of marijuana prohibition also see:

Harvard Economist on why marijuana should be legalized:

Legal Pot Means Big Savings on Law Enforcement

October 28th, 2010 – I dropped in on a marijuana shop here that proudly boasted that it sells “31 flavors.” It also offered a loyalty program. For every 10 purchases of pot — supposedly for medical uses — you get one free packet.

“There are five of these shops within a three-block radius,” explained the proprietor, Edward J. Kim. He brimmed with pride at his inventory and sounded like any small businessman as he complained about onerous government regulation. Like, well, state and federal laws.

But those burdensome regulations are already evaporating in California, where anyone who can fake a headache already can buy pot. Now there’s a significant chance that on Tuesday, California voters will choose to go further and broadly legalize marijuana.

I hope so. Our nearly century-long experiment in banning marijuana has failed as abysmally as Prohibition did, and California may now be pioneering a saner approach. Sure, there are risks if California legalizes pot. But our present drug policy has three catastrophic consequences.

First, it squanders billions of dollars that might be better used for education. California now spends more money on prisons than on higher education. It spends about $216,000 per year on each juvenile detainee, and just $8,000 on each child in the troubled Oakland public school system.

Each year, some 750,000 Americans are arrested for possession of small amounts of marijuana. Is that really the optimal use of our police force?

In contrast, legalizing and taxing marijuana would bring in substantial sums that could be used to pay for schools, libraries or early childhood education. A Harvard economist, Jeffrey A. Miron, calculates that marijuana could generate $8.7 billion in tax revenue each year if legalized nationally, while legalization would also save the same sum annually in enforcement costs.

That’s a $17 billion swing in the nation’s finances — enough to send every 3- and 4-year-old in a poor family to a high-quality preschool. And that’s an investment that would improve education outcomes and reduce crime and drug use in the future — with enough left over to pay for an extensive nationwide campaign to discourage drug use.

The second big problem with the drug war is that it has exacerbated poverty and devastated the family structure of African-Americans. Partly that’s because drug laws are enforced inequitably. Black and Latino men are much more likely than whites to be stopped and searched and, when drugs are found, prosecuted.

Here in Los Angeles, blacks are arrested for marijuana possession at seven times the rate whites are, according to a study by the Drug Policy Alliance, which favors legalization. Yet surveys consistently find that young whites use marijuana at higher rates than young blacks.

Partly because of drug laws, a black man now has a one-in-three chance of serving time in prison at some point in his life, according to the Sentencing Project, a group that seeks reform in the criminal justice system. This makes it more difficult for black men to find jobs, more difficult for black women to find suitable husbands, and less common for black children to grow up in stable families with black male role models. So, sure, drugs have devastated black communities — but the remedy of criminal sentencing has made the situation worse.

The third problem with our drug policy is that it creates crime and empowers gangs. “The only groups that benefit from continuing to keep marijuana illegal are the violent gangs and cartels that control its distribution and reap immense profits from it through the black market,” a group of current and former police officers, judges and prosecutors wrote last month in an open letter to voters in California.

I have no illusions about drugs. One of my childhood friends in Yamhill, Ore., pretty much squandered his life by dabbling with marijuana in ninth grade and then moving on to stronger stuff. And yes, there’s some risk that legalization would make such dabbling more common. But that hasn’t been a significant problem in Portugal, which decriminalized drug use in 2001.

Likewise, medical marijuana laws approved in 1996 have in effect made pot accessible to any adult in California, without any large increase in usage. Special medical clinics abound where for about $45 you can see a doctor who is certain to give you the medical recommendation that you need to buy marijuana. Then you can visit Mr. Kim and choose one of his 31 varieties, topping out at a private “OG” brand that costs $75 for one-eighth of an ounce. “It’s like a fine wine, cured, aged, dried,” he boasted.

Or browse the online offerings. One store advertises: “refer a friend, get free joint.” And the world hasn’t ended.

One advantage of our federal system is that when we have a failed policy, we can grope for improvements by experimenting at the state level. I hope California will lead the way on Tuesday by legalizing marijuana. By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF. Source.