Note: If you haven't read the first part of this series, do so now by clicking here.
A study by the ACLU found that enforcing marijuana possession laws cost the 50 states in the US $3.6 billion in 2010. (1) Even the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) (which opposes legalization) acknowledges this, but responds by saying that "While Federal, state, and local laws pertaining to marijuana do lead to criminal justice costs, it is important to understand how decriminalization or legalization might further exacerbate these costs. Alcohol, a legal, carefully regulated substance, provides useful context for this discussion. Arrests for alcohol-related crimes, such as violations of liquor laws and driving under the influence, totaled nearly 2.5 million in 2010 — far more than arrests for all illegal drug use, and certainly far more than arrests for marijuana-related crimes. It is therefore fair to suggest that decriminalizing or legalizing marijuana might not reduce the drug’s burden to our justice and public health systems with respect to arrests, but might increase these costs by making the drug more readily available, leading to increase [sic] use, and ultimately to more arrests for violations of laws controlling its manufacture, sale, and use." (2) The problem is that not only did this not happen in Colorado after marijuana was legalized in 2012, marijuana arrests dropped there by 95%. (3)
As discussed in the previous post in this series, marijuana legalization would lead to increased use. (4)(5) As also discussed in the previous post, marijuana is not harmless, so there would be adverse public health effects if marijuana use was legalized. So how bad would they be? One way to answer this, or at least try to do so, is look at the economic cost of such effects.
Some opponents of legalization warn that it would lead to an increase in drugged driving. However, in Colorado, after marijuana was legalized, highway deaths actually dropped considerably. (6)
Then there is the clearest economic benefit from legalization--tax revenue. Just this past June, Colorado collected $9.7 million in marijuana sales taxes. (7) The legal marijuana industry in Colorado has an estimated value of $700 million. (8) And yet the ONDCP still says that "research suggests that the economic costs associated with use of the drug could far outweigh any benefit gained from an increase in tax revenue." (2) They then go on to claim that illegal drugs cost America $193 billion in 2007, and although the link provided is dead, I was able to revive it through the Wayback Machine. (9) It seems that the word "marijuana" is used a total of 4 times in this document (which was produced by the now-defunct National Drug Intelligence Center, a division of the DOJ), and each time, nothing specific is said about this drug's impact as compared with that of other illicit drugs. Therefore, it seems misleading to conflate marijuana with other illegal drugs in this way as the ONDCP does.
The ONDCP then cites a RAND Corporation report (10) which found that marijuana legalization in California would probably lower the price of marijuana (before tax) by more than 80%. Presumably, what they are arguing is that if the price drops, revenue will be much lower than expected as well because taxes are proportionate to price. They then say that "higher prices help keep use rates relatively low." In other words, a decrease in price, such as the one predicted by RAND, would, according to the ONDCP's logic, seem to lead to an increase in use. Sure, this might, conceivably, lead to more adverse health effects among the public, but it would also lead to more tax revenue being collected.
But perhaps the most misleading argument advanced by the ONDCP is an implicit equating of marijuana with alcohol in the following analysis: "The tax revenue collected from alcohol pales in comparison to the costs associated with it. Federal excise taxes collected on alcohol in 2009 totaled around $9.4 billion; state and local revenues from alcohol taxes totaled approximately $5.9 billion. Taken together ($15.3 billion), this is just over six percent of the nearly $237.8 billion adjusted for 2009 inflation) in alcohol-related costs from health care, treatment services, lost productivity, and criminal justice." (2) The implication is that legalizing marijuana would lead to huge societal costs because of the harms of marijuana and their huge economic costs. Presumably, if marijuana is illegal and alcohol legal, the ONDCP would have us believe that, despite the evidence discussed last post, the economic cost of alcohol is less than that of marijuana! As mentioned above, this seriously undermines their credibility because the two drugs are quite different.
Let's review: enforcing marijuana laws is expensive and way fewer people would be arrested for violating these laws if marijuana were legalized, as the Colorado experience shows. More people would use it, but Colorado's experience also suggests that the effects on driving wouldn't be as bad as some had predicted. Maybe we wouldn't make as much money from taxes because the price would go down, but if that does happen, use will go up, which would counteract the price decrease and make tax revenue go back up. Saying that it will be just like alcohol only makes sense if they are both equally harmful, but they aren't. And the boost to the economy independent of taxes would be significant as well. Economically, like medically, there doesn't seem to be a very good argument against keeping marijuana illegal.
Sources:
1. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/04/marijuana-arrests-cost-racially-biased_n_3385756.html
2. https://www.whitehouse.gov/ondcp/frequently-asked-questions-and-facts-about-marijuana
3. http://www.ibtimes.com/marijuana-arrests-colorado-down-95-legalization-arrest-rates-still-twice-high-blacks-1866294
4. http://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WR770.html
5. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1360-0443.2011.03561.x/abstract
6. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/08/05/since-marijuana-legalization-highway-fatalities-in-colorado-are-at-near-historic-lows/
7. http://time.com/4003262/colorado-pot-revenue/
8. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/12/colorados-legal-weed-market-700-million-in-sales-last-year-1-billion-by-2016/
9. http://web.archive.org/web/20110526175318/http://www.justice.gov/ndic/pubs44/44731/44731p.pdf
10. http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/occasional_papers/2010/RAND_OP315.pdf
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