That was the urgent message on the letter in my college mailbox. It turns out that Dr. Friedman wants me to sign an open letter endorsing The Budgetary Implications of Marijuana Prohibition.
What troubles me is the reasoning:“The report finds that replacing marijuana prohibition with a system of taxation and regulation would save the United States $7.7 billion per year in state and federal expenditures and might generate as much as $6.2 billion annually in tax revenue.”
True, but we could raise some revenue if we started taxing hugs, too. Needless to say, I don’t think I’ll be signing this petition, even though I’m all for decriminalizing / completely legalizing marijuana.
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Oh, that radical Milton Friedman–he just wants to tax and regulate everything!
I think the assumption is that all commerce is taxed, and so legalizing marijuana would immediately fall under that umbrella.
We can argue the value of taxing commerce, but that’s a separate argument. If pot were made legal today, normal tax laws would cover it. Drug deals would have sales tax, drug dealers would pay income tax, etc…
And their point about saving the states money is an excellent one — ask any cop if he wants to spend time prosecuting marijuana possessions or murders, and then how much time they spend doing each. Billions of dollars are spent prosecuting the madness known as the War on Drugs, and marijuana crime makes up a large portion of that.
Legalizing marijuana is literally one of the most beneficial one line laws changes we could make as a society. We can work on removing taxes too, for both drug dealers and everyone else.
Would you endorse swapping taxation of alcohol for prohibition of alcohol? (Or substitute any currently legal and taxed good for alcohol.)
If your answer is no perhaps you should reconsider.
Any level of taxation is preferable to prohibition, as in the worst case the former is merely equivalent to the latter — voluntary trade moves underground. If I am wrong about this please do explain.
Bob, how do you think you ended up on this mailing list?
“Any level of taxation is preferable to prohibition, as in the worst case the former is merely equivalent to the latter — voluntary trade moves underground. If I am wrong about this please do explain.”
Yeah, I always considered prohibition to effectively be a taxation rate of infinity, or whatever the effective bound of taxation is.
If the level of taxation is similar to what’s now on alcohol and tobacco, then that’s the BEST we could ever hope for.
You’d better support this. Billions of tax dollars are being wasted enforcing marijuana laws.
“You’d better support this.”
What type of statement is this?
Just to clarify, my problem with this is that it is citing the tax revenue to gov’t as a good thing. I am not an unreasonable purist; in my econ classes I go through all sorts of pragmatic arguments for legalization, and just briefly mention that “some people would claim that it’s a violation of rights, regardless of consequences.”
Look, whether or not I sign this thing, won’t affect legislation. So why would I endorse something I think is totally misguided? Because with that extra $7.7 b the fed gov’t can send more troops to Iraq, or hire more people to conduct audits?
“Bob, how do you think you ended up on this mailing list?”
Either they think I’m a free market economist or a pot head (or both).
The government needs revenue. There is a ZERO chance that marijuana would be legalized and not at least taxed like regular consumer goods.
In addition to saving money on on enforcement, the prohibition on an activity that a lot of people do anyway has a lot of other negatives that may be harming us a lot more than the $7.7 billion mentioned.
If enough economists sign the letter, it might get enough attention to actually influence policy.
I posted a link to it on my blog just now. If enough bloggers get behind it, then the media will at least cover it. We’ve seen before that the media is now paying attention to blogs.
You can only help the U.S. by signing the letter. Unless you think we are better of keeping it illegal.
“my problem with this is that it is citing the tax revenue to gov’t as a good thing”
Fair enough. Thanks for the clarification.
“The government needs revenue.”
Oddly enough, Bob would probably prefer that the government get no revenue at all. Clearly he “lacks common sense.”
1. Everyone uses or doesn’t use cannabis, just like they did/didn’t before.
2. A few people escape prosecution for possession/sale of the drug, but enforcement is redirected to users of other drugs or “underage” cannabis possession or various other victimless non-crimes.
3. The government takes in more revenue.
4. The premise of the state rightfully telling individuals what they cannot buy/sell/smoke goes unchallenged.
Yeah, great way to advance the cause of freedom! Thanks for nothing, Milton!
“The premise of the state rightfully telling individuals what they cannot buy/sell/smoke goes unchallenged. Yeah, great way to advance the cause of freedom!”
Legislatures acting RESPONSIBLY and not unnecessarily making things illegal does indeed advance the cause of freedom.
No matter how much freedom the Constitution might grant, if the legislature doesn’t buy it, it’s bad for freedom.
I don’t know how much money is to be made in the prison construction industry (my guess would be that there’s enough to live quite comfortably and influence “the legislature.”) I have no doubt about the fact that prison builders do truly believe that the ridiculous amount of drug “offenders” jailed is (aside from being a profit bonanza) also good for, you know, “society.” My point is, once you concede such authority to such a loathsome bunch, don’t ever consider yourself in the right when you challenge the state’s power, no matter how wrong they are.
I think you ought to sign this.
A refusal to sign would strike me as what Rothbard (borrowing from Marx of all people) would have called the fallacy of sectarianism. You agree with the cause. The reason put forth for the cause, even if it may not be the same as your own, is still a valid one. Signing the petition can do nothing but further the cause for liberty. If you refuse, I think you’re shooting yourself in the foot.
Since you likely cannot sign this with a caveat, I think the best thing to do is to politely decline, and send Dr. Friedman your reasons for doing so, along with your best wishes. What Would Miss Manners Do?
I think we need a Drug War Memorial. Every arrest, every conviction, every shootout victim should be on it, a la the Vietnam Wall: users, possessors, dealers, conspirators, innocent bystanders, and enforcers. Remember, the police are as much victims of the War on Drugs as everyone else. No matter how enthusiastically the War is prosecuted in some circles, the police did not start it, and in some cases are benignly neglecting the drug trade.
I was recently asked to support the purchase of bullet-proof vests for police in my jurisdiction. I replied that if the War on Drugs was ended, the police would likely no longer need bullet-proof vests. An oversimplification, perhaps, but there is no other explanation that I know for 1) increasing levels of violent crime and 2) increasingly militarized police forces.
“Legislatures acting RESPONSIBLY and not unnecessarily making things illegal does indeed advance the cause of freedom.
No matter how much freedom the Constitution might grant, if the legislature doesn’t buy it, it’s bad for freedom.”
A Truly distrubing statement on the part of “Half Sigma”….
Have you not seen the Terri Schiavo case? The Legislatures acting responsibly there? How about the Iraq war? Oh, The Patriot Act? Oh about them still funding the war?
So your saying that oh 545 men and women can tell us what is GOOD or BAD for freedom? Really you believe that 545 people should tell the oh 270 million people how to live? Right new slogan…
Statists for America!
Recent editorial in the Everett Herald by Dick Startz, University of Washington Econ prof makes the economic case for legalization. http://www.heraldnet.com
The argument ISN’T that it can be controlled and taxed because it is a nice house plant.
Uncle Milton is most concerned about the growth of government spending as a percetnage of GDP. He sees that as the most damaging thing for the US economy in the future. (Support for that claim is here.
While he makes no real assertion on the validity of legalizing pot, what he really fears is that it would be taxed and more money would flow from people to the Feds, exacerbating what he sees already as a problem.
Personally I dont think its all that difficult to get and use pot now, so I dont see a big problem. I think of it as a tax free good that is marginally difficult to find.
According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy official website, the 2005 budget for this agency alone was $12.2 billion. This does not include the cost of incarcerating 440,000 drug offenders, or the cost of proving services the families of the growing number of incarcerated women.
Where did the figure of $7.7 billion for marijuana come from? Do they keep separate rat-holes for different drugs?
BTW, does anyone honestly believe that if marijuana was legalized that the taxpayers would be refunded the $7.7 billion? In my cynical opinion, they would take the $7.7 billion and the $6.2 billion in new tax revenue and spend it on some other worthless activity.
“Have you not seen the Terri Schiavo case?” Not with my own eyes, but I agree that it was bad legislating for Congress to get involved with it.
But repealing marijuna prohibition is good legislating, which is why Robert Murphy should sign the letter.
Half Sigma… Have you ever heard of a libertarian?
Anyways no Going on a Marijuana Prohibition (Which hey we’re already on (What a Thought!) is bad, just look at what it was done to it. Ask yourself this… Why do people (especially kids) break laws?
Any Legeslation that takes OUR money and puts it into something we don’t believe in is NOT good legislation… after all the legislation that congress has put out none have been good.
I wonder if we could persuade ourselves that swapping prohibition for some high(er) level of taxation could somehow be construed as a TAX REDUCTION? That would enable me to get behind it.
The government profits TWO ways: from reduced expenditures on fighting the “Drug War” AND from the additional tax revenues.
When I contemplate what this double-header of uncommitted government money might be diverted to, I begin to think that Bob may have been right not to sign, after all.
I teach macro economics and I received an open letter to sign the budgetary implications of legalizing marijuana.
The U.S. govt will never let us grow plants in our living rooms that will put the ciggybutt companies out of business. The only reason it isn’t illegal to grow tobacco is that it is difficult to process in small batches.
Just to clarify, my problem with this is that it is citing the tax revenue to gov’t as a good thing.
I am quite sure that you misunderstand his intentions. He is citing it as a good thing, not because he personally believes that tax revenue is good, but because he believes that most people see tax revenue as good, and thus it is a powerful argument. That is, he is making a consequentalist argument, saying “look at these positive effects of this policy change”, where the “positive effects” are those he thinks will appeal to the populace and the government.
If there was a realistic option involving legalization and no taxes, I’m sure he’d be all for it. But there isn’t, so he is left appearing to advocate taxation. Such is often the fate of the pragmatic libertarian, who would rather have a little real freedom than a lot of imagined freedom.
The reason many take Marijuna is for the thrill of breaking the law. If Marijuna is legalised, the battleground will move to progressively harder drugs and the only potential result is the denigration of society.
And with regards to the question: should we be aiming to restrict drug use at all; the answer is an overwhelming yes? The problem with drug addiction is that while a person may choose to use drugs today, he may choose not to tomorrow, but his addiction prevents him/her from acting on this choice – in short freedom of drug use actually leads to less freedom for individuals in the long term.
So drug use should be banned, and marijuna should not be legalised as its illegal nature is part of the reason people buy it in the first place.
In a revenue-generating decriminalization attempt, the government could force the industry to move closer to being a natural monopoly, whereby economies of scale are used to make selling pot at much lower prices than those currently posted on the black market a reality. The purpose of course would be to create a disincentive for current marijuana dealers while the government could take in revenue to help pay for the approaching healthcare and pension crises in developed nations.
One of the major snags in the implementation of this strategy would be a practical production and distribution model. A legislating government would need to determine how to control the production of its hired growers. This problem is similar to that encountered in the study of renewable natural resources and resembles a game with a leader (the government) and a series of followers (“underground distributors”), in that controlling supply to maximize profits relative to other industry agents requires a pre-determined supply based on expectations.
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