Pubdate: Sun, 11 Jul 2010
Source: Orange County Register, The (CA)
Copyright: 2010 The Orange County Register
Contact:  http://www.ocregister.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/321
Author: Steven Greenhut
Note: Steven Greenhut is director of the Pacific Research Institute's 
www.calwatchdog.com journalism center.
Cited: Proposition 19 http://www.taxcannabis.org/
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Proposition+19

CAN GOP QUIT WEED WHACKING?

Sacramento - If the California Republican Party were serious about 
its oft-stated calls for limiting government, then it should be 
championing an initiative on the November ballot that would reduce 
government interference in our lives, increase the efficiency of 
law-enforcement, protect property rights and help fill the gaping 
hole in the state budget by following the principles of the marketplace.

To make it even more enticing, this initiative echoes arguments 
advocated by free-market heroes Milton Friedman and William F. 
Buckley. Even better, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown, 
the longtime market critic, has been stumping against this seemingly 
popular measure.

Support for it could give the GOP an issue to exploit in the governor's race.

As you can tell by my reluctance to mention the specific measure, 
it's obvious this is something the GOP and its candidate for 
governor, Meg Whitman, are unlikely to embrace.

I'm referring to Proposition 19, which would legalize the possession 
of an ounce or less of marijuana for recreational uses. Despite the 
expected protests of Prohibition supporters mainly conservative 
moralists and law enforcement officials who benefit from the 
big-government regimen the initiative would not allow anyone to smoke 
weed in public or drive while impaired or provide the stuff to minors.

Only licensed businesses could sell it. Local governments would have 
the right to impose every manner of regulation on marijuana.

This is more restrictive than what I would devise, but its passage 
would be a net gain for freedom and sanity.

Not surprisingly, Brown doesn't understand the dynamics of the 
current drug war. Speaking in June to the California District 
Attorneys Association in Monterey, he said, "Every year we get more 
and more marijuana and every year we find more guys with AK-47s 
coming out of Mexico and going into forests and growing more and more 
dangerous and losing control."

Actually, the Mexican drug lords operate as violently as they do 
because drugs are illegal.

The very illegality of them drives up prices and makes it so 
lucrative to sell them that the most ruthless cartels tend to be the 
most successful ones. If drugs were legal, then licensed, insured and 
professional companies would control the market. Prices would be 
lower, so hard-drug addicts would commit fewer crimes to support their habit.

There would be no gunbattles in the streets, less political 
corruption, and disputes would be handled in the courts.

As blogger Jon Walker put it in his response to Brown's economically 
illiterate comments in Monterey, "Before alcohol prohibition, the 
vast majority of alcohol sales were controlled by legal concerns 
breweries like Anheuser Busch, distillers and saloon owners. Once 
legal companies couldn't sell alcohol anymore, the business was taken 
over by criminal enterprises." As many libertarians often note, 
Budweiser dealers don't duke it out over market share.

In his 1991 speech calling the drug war a "socialist enterprise," 
Nobel economist Friedman asked, "Whose interests are served by the 
drug war? ... The major beneficiaries from drug prohibition are the 
drug lords, who can maintain a cartel they would be unable to 
maintain without current government policy." This reminds me of 
another libertarian phrase about the "Baptists and the bootleggers" 
the two groups who most zealously supported alcohol Prohibition. The 
first group supported it for moral reasons, whereas the latter 
supported it (and often funded the former) in service to less-lofty goals.

Prop. 19, of course, deals only with marijuana, which is far less 
dangerous than alcohol and which has, according to initiative 
sponsors, been used by approximately one-third of the country's 
population, most of whom manage to live law-abiding, productive 
lives. Those who oppose the initiative are, in effect, saying that 
it's better that police resources are squandered in a pursuit of pot 
smokers and that the government should arrest, fine and even jail 
people who prefer the pleasures of marijuana to those of a vodka 
martini or craft brew (my preferences!).

Conservatives who oppose legalization should at least dispense with 
the fiction that they believe in free choices and less government.

In a 1996 article in National Review, William F. Buckley touched on 
the most troubling aspect for conservatives of the drug war: "I have 
not spoken of the cost to our society of the astonishing legal 
weapons available now to policemen and prosecutors; of the penalty of 
forfeiture of one's home and property for violation of laws which, 
though designed to advance the war against drugs, could legally be 
used ... as penalties for the neglect of one's pets. I leave it at 
this, that it is outrageous to live in a society whose laws tolerate 
sending young people to life in prison because they grew, or 
distributed, a dozen ounces of marijuana."

And, Buckley calculated, the drug war appears to cause more death and 
destruction than drug use. He surely would have understood why the 
NAACP has embraced Prop. 19, given the high (and growing) arrest rate 
for African Americans for pot use and the harm it does to young 
people to have an arrest on their record as they try to build careers.

Furthermore, "there is little apparent relationship between severity 
of sanctions [against drug use] and rate of consumption," according 
to initiative supporters. This can use deeper study, but it makes 
sense. I can afford any amount of alcohol I could possibly want, yet 
I only drink a moderate amount.

For the vast majority of people, consumption is based on a variety of 
social factors and preferences, not on the availability of the product.

But I'll leave the utilitarian arguments to others.

Suffice it to say that government should not be in the business of 
waging moral crusades that fine, jail and harass average citizens for 
victimless crimes and which enrich the criminal class.

Here's one area where California might be pushing in the right direction. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake