Pubdate: Thu, 30 Sep 2010
Source: Massachusetts Daily Collegian (U of MA, Edu)
Copyright: 2010 Daily Collegian
Contact:  http://www.dailycollegian.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1401
Author: Ben Rudnick

PROHIBITION IS NOT WORKING

The consensus thinking among libertarians is that the standard by which 
people should judge any law or government program is whether the benefits 
of that law or government program outweigh the costs associated with its 
enactment or enforcement.

With that in mind, can anybody name for me any example from history when 
any government of any kind has ever been able to prevent its citizens from 
partaking of any vice by prohibiting that behavior? No? Then explain how 
the United States Federal Government intends to stop the use of a substance 
that can be routinely cultivated in an average person's closet.

The prohibition of marijuana can never be successful.

Knowing that there is zero possibility of success in its prohibition, the 
question each of us must ask is whether the benefits of limiting the use of 
marijuana as a drug outweigh the costs associated with combating it.

How effective has prohibition been in reducing marijuana usage? Not very 
effective.

The 2009 National Survey on Drug Use and Health reports that the number of 
people over the age of 12 who admitted to using cannabis within the past 
month rose from 6.2 percent in 2002 to 6.6 percent in 2009.

However, keep in mind that these numbers are survey-based and, since 
illegal drug use is unquantifiable in any exact sense, there is every 
reason to believe the real numbers are far higher. Reason.com columnist 
Jacob Sullum uses data from the FBI and the National Survey on Drug Use and 
Health in a Sept. 16 blog post to highlight the fact that while arrests for 
marijuana crimes have roughly tripled since the early 1990's, use has not 
only remained constant, but has actually risen slightly. Since the 
government can only ever hope to reduce usage and it hasn't even done that, 
then the only question left to answer is whether the costs of prohibition 
outweigh its nonexistent success.

Even a cursory glance at those costs indicates that they far exceed the 
benefits. For example, The Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) 
claims that in 1997 "only 1.6 percent of the state inmate population had 
been convicted of a marijuana only crime, including trafficking." This was 
before many states began legalizing medical marijuana, which resulted in a 
federal crackdown on trafficking and use, but let's assume that the same 
percentage holds true today at both the state and federal level.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) reported that in 2006, there were 
1,569,945 federal and state prison inmates. At a rate of 1.6 percent, that 
means over 25,000 of them were incarcerated for marijuana crimes. BJS 
statistics on corrections expenditures indicate that these 25,000 inmates 
represent a cost of just over $1 billion that year. This is just the cost 
for the incarceration of these inmates, which number does not even include 
all those who violated other laws as a result of being involved in the 
criminalized economy of marijuana. To me, this represents a minimum of 
25,000 people and $1 billion too many.

Then there is the cost imposed by prohibition on hemp cultivation. Hemp is 
one of the most useful crops mankind has ever cultivated. It was so crucial 
to the colonial economy that many areas, including Mass., required farmers 
to dedicate some portion of their acreage to its cultivation. Despite the 
fact that it had been criminalized in 1937, the U.S. government initiated 
the "Hemp for Victory" program during World War II to encourage farmers to 
grow the crop for use in making rope and other products for the war effort. 
Today, rather than cutting down trees, which remove carbon from the 
atmosphere and are at best a semi-renewable resource, we could be making 
paper (and cloth and plastic and myriad and other useful items) from a crop 
that generates less pollution in the manufacturing process, grows in almost 
any climate region and is completely renewable.

So, is there some other proven method for reducing the use of a harmful 
substance? Remarkably, according to the Centers for Disease Control and 
Prevention (CDC), the government's own data shows that we have had far more 
success reducing the prevalence of smoking than we have in reducing the use 
of cannabis. Through aggressive education and prevention programs, not to 
mention increasingly heavy doses of taxation, the percentage of adults who 
smoke in the U.S. has declined from 24.7 percent in 1997 to 20.6 percent in 
2009.

In fact, the number of adult smokers had dropped to only 19.7 percent in 
2007 before the recent recession began at the end of that year, once again 
proving the correlation of rising vice to periods of economic distress.

Besides, I don't know about you, but I would really look forward to seeing 
what MTV would do with their "Shards 'O Glass" anti-smoking commercials to 
refocus them on reducing youth pot smoking.

I'm not going to tell you that legalization is the only solution to our 
marijuana issues, but as these facts prove beyond any doubt, the current 
situation causes more harm than good. Prohibition is not working, so let's 
find something that will.

Ben Rudnick is a Collegian columnist. 
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D