Legalize It: Hypocrisy and Inefficiency

Legalize it: Hypocrisy and Inefficiency in Marijuana Laws

The "War on Drugs" is now forty years old as a term and as a system of federal domestic and foreign policies, and given the attention it receives in the media may citizens might think it is focused on extreme and highly relevant situations. Dealers in hard drugs such as crack, cocaine, heroin, meth, and the like are no doubt what usually comes when one thinks of the domestic targets of this War on Drugs, and if people even consider the foreign policy implications and actions of this War (which are considerable) it is almost certainly thought that the cocaine syndicates of Latin America and the opium warlords of the Middle East are the forces causing the most concern to the federal government. In reality, however, almost half of all drug related arrests in this country are for simple marijuana possession, and a lot of effort is put into suppressing both foreign and domestic marijuana production while more violent criminals in more lucrative fields continue to flourish.

Would it surprise you to learn that according to the Uniform Crime Reports maintained and published by the FBI, there were more than one-and-a-half million drug related arrests in the United States in 2010? If you don't find that rather shocking, consider that forty-six percent of those arrests -- almost seven-hundred thousand -- were for marijuana possession. Not dealing, not transporting or trafficking, simply for having weed. That means almost seven-hundred thousand people were handcuffed, booked into a police station, earned criminal records, and possibly even spent a night in jail for possessing marijuana. Almost seven-hundred thousand court appearances and seven hundred thousand judgments.

Even if you think marijuana is a dangerous drug that should be controlled, the number of man-hours that were spent in the arrests and resultant cases for marijuana possession is entirely out of proportion. The fact is, a lot of people use marijuana, so it's pretty easy to make arrests for the offense and make the War of Drugs look good, even if it isn't doing much to affect the use of truly dangerous drugs like cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines, and the like. Marijuana and marijuana users make easy targets, and so law enforcement energies focus their efforts towards them in order to bag the most trophies. Many scholars, law enforcement officials, and even policy makers and politicians have acknowledged what common sense tells almost anyone: that the War on Drugs is ultimately unwinnable, as people have been getting intoxicated ever since intoxicants were discovered. The many arrests that are made each year involving marijuana do nothing to prevent or limit its sale or use, and this, too, has been acknowledged.

Meanwhile the major dealers reap massive profits without paying a dime of taxes, something that the legalization of marijuana could very quickly and easily put a stop to. If marijuana were regulated and taxed like alcohol and tobacco, large criminal operations like the Mexican drug cartels wouldn't be able to earn 60% of their profits from marijuana sales in the United States. They wouldn't be able to fund their more nefarious and violent activities, including human trafficking and enforced prostitution, from the sale of a relatively innocuous plant product that has well-documented and often-prescribed medical benefits.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon has himself all but directly called for the legalization of marijuana as a means of curtailing the crime it fuels in his own country. In a recent speech he delivered in New York, at which President Obama was also in attendance, President Calderon noted that the drug production and trafficking in his country could not be effectively curbed with the world's largest consumer of drugs -- the United States -- as their immediate neighbor. Comparing it to selling drugs out of windows and doors and onto the streets, Calderon said, "If the consumption of drugs cannot be limited, then decision-makers must seek more solutions -- including market alternatives -- in order to reduce the astronomical earnings of criminal organizations." In other words, trying to stop the production and sale of marijuana is the very thing that makes it such a lucrative venture for criminal organizations, so creating a legal market for marijuana would be the most effective way of reducing the criminal impact of marijuana production and consumption.

The drug cartels will lose money if marijuana is legalized, there's no question. Other entities also stand to make a lot of money if the plant and rug is legalized, and some of these entities could really put it to good use. As one of the biggest cash crops in the country (the biggest by far, according to some measures), the tax revenues that could potentially be earned from the sale of marijuana easily stretch into the billions, while several more billions of taxpayer dollars could be saved every year simply by ceasing to arrest or prosecute marijuana possession cases. Budget shortfalls could be significantly impacted by a move that many see as the only practical solution anyway.

In the four decades since President Richard Nixon fired the first shot in the War on Drugs, drug abuse has drastically increased instead of being reduced. The one-hundred million dollars that the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act was originally conceived to cost has grown to well over one trillion dollars at this point, with more than fifteen billion dollars of taxpayer money spent in 2010 alone on the War on Drugs as a whole, with at least half of these dollars going to fight marijuana. An extensive examination of the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports shows that from 1980 to 2010, over ten million arrests have been made for marijuana possession. Again, that is just for possession -- for having any small amount of pot and/or paraphernalia on your person or in your property. The number of arrests made during the same time period for the sale and/or distribution of marijuana? Less than one-and-a-half million. Almost ten times as many people were arrested in the past thirty years for possessing as opposed to selling marijuana, and in some states even possession of less than an ounce can get you six months in jail for a first offense.

The disproportionate and ineffective response to marijuana use as a part of the War on Drugs is readily apparent to most people who objectively look at the facts, and there is one very important group that is helping to make this clear. More and more law enforcement officials and policy advisers are coming out in support of marijuana's legalization, believing marijuana arrests result in an unnecessary drain on already strained resources. In addition, a simple marijuana arrest can create criminals through exposure in jails and even closes off student loan opportunities.