Legalize Drugs says Professor Moron, uh, Miron

In another outbreak of stupidity, a Harvard professor has urged legalization of recreational drugs. You know. Heroin, cocaine, crystal meth and marijuana, to name a few.

Every time one of these crackpots erupts in favor of drug legalization, the response from the sane people is near silence. Why? The reasons to oppose legalization are plain as day.

If recreational drugs were legal, advertising of the those drugs would become ubiquitious. Omnipresent. Relentless. Why? Because advertising works. Thus, the use of powerful substances, many of which are highly addicting, would soar.

Imagine the number of sporting events sponsored by recreational drug makers. The stadiums on which their names appear.

But that's far from the worst of it.

Every drug legalization crackpot mentions the potential for tax revenue and the further benefit of reduced law enforcement spending to catch drug criminals. Great.

That's another way of saying the government becomes a partner to drug sellers whose business is selling addicting substances to hapless consumers. As everyone should know, drug dealers want your money. All of it. When a drug consumer is addicted, he willingly forks over all he's got. He'll keep paying until he's broke or dead. But the only time he'll truly stop spending is when he's dead.

We already know the government exploits partnerships with sellers of addictive products. Tobacco. It's true that cigarettes cost little to make. Marketing expenses raise the price to consumers. But a pack of Marlboros sell for $12 in NY City convenience store. Why? Federal, state and local taxes. Everyone wants a piece of this pie, and no one objects to extracting as much money as possible from the pockets of tobacco addicts. It's politically safe to exploit addicts.

Is this what we want from our government? A platform for peddling crystal meth or cocaine from which every state and municipality extracts its piece? There are about 50 million cigarette smokers in the US. The number is declining, partly because people, after almost 50 years of anti-smoking campaigns, are getting the message.

But what does it say if we reverse our moral position by legitimizing the use of dangerous addictive substances for the sake of increasing tax revenue and, astonishingly, claiming that somehow unrestricted access to newly legalized recreational drugs will make a bad situation better?

If we legalize the sale of heroin, cocaine and crystal meth, etc., we have opened the door to the most vile of all possibilities -- enslavement of the population by a government driven by visions of the revenue stream it can extract from helpless addicts. Truly an unholy alliance between government, human weakness and commerce.

Wait. It gets worse. For guidance, drug legalization crackpots like to look at alcohol. But alcohol, the molecule that intoxicates drinkers, contains a specific number of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Whether in beer, wine or liquor, that intoxicating molecule is the same. Recreational drugs fall into a different and far more dangerous form of chemistry.

They are limited only by the creativity of the scientists who develop them. Do we want to live in a nation, a world, where scientists are suddenly motivated to create addicting substances that will induce people to spend all their money? If you want dystopia, drug legalization will do it.

In the corporate world, could there be a more sought-after product than one that is so addicting that consumers will do anything to get it? Talk about brand loyalty.

The pharmaceutical industry is credited with regularly creating miracle drugs, the drugs that save lives, defeat death. Do we want the same brilliant people to design drugs for sinister, mercenary and destructive purposes?

Meanwhile, what would legalization of recreational drugs do for the prescription drug industry in general? Vicodin? If heroin were legal, then what reason would remain for selling Vicodin by prescription? Or any other painkiller?

What would legalization mean for imports? Cocaine and heroin are imports. I suppose, if they were legalized, some smart scientists would develop plants capable of thriving somewhere in the US. Till then, is there an argument to support the importation of heroin made from opium poppies grown in Afghanistan? Should we fund the muslim terrorists who are killing American troops? Should we enrich the narco-terrorists in Colombia? There's no reason to think other nations would surrender their national interests to coca or poppy growers.

Moreover, there's no reason to think the violence on the Mexican side of the Mexico/US border would decline if the US were to legalize drugs.

What would drug legalization do for tourism? Consider the wine industry. First, has the growth of the wine industry led to lower prices for wine? No. Second, wine tours are common. Drug legalization would mean the return of opium dens. Drug tourists would come to the US on dope-smoking excursions and for tours of drug laboratories where visitors would sample the goods, just like they do at the Jack Daniels distillery, at breweries and wineries.

As consumers became inured to the effects, what would they do to increase and intensify their highs? Would it surprise anyone to see a surge in intravenous drug use? It's the obvious step. Of course pharmaceutical companies would do their best to create even more potent products. How would the law regulate these legal drugs?

Then there are social consequences. Legal or not, as with alcohol, employers would have to take a stand against on-the-job recreational drug use. Municipalities would have to prosecute drivers operating vehicles under the influence.

Furthermore, legal use of recreational drugs will undoubtedly cut different paths through different socio-economic and racial groups. Substance abuse is already a big problem in minority neighborhoods. There's already a disturbing link between drug use and prostitution. Drug legalization would make it even easier for exploiters to enslave young girls and put them to work on the street. At the same time, the exposure to disease would multiply. They would face the usual risk of contracting venereal diseses. But their risk of contracting AIDS would increase as a result of contact with johns and with IV drug use their exploiters would likely encourage.

Meanwhile, what would legalization do to the price of drugs? As pricing of alcohol suggests, some drugs would sell for very little, and some would sell for a lot. Reputation, snob appeal, product quality, all of the elements of consumerism would result in a range of prices. Majorska or Grey Goose.

Is it conceivable that abuse of currently illegal substances would subside if the substances were both legal and less expensive? The thought is folly.

Just Say "Yes!" Legalizing Drugs Is Good for Society ... and the Economy, Harvard Prof. Says

Oct 06, 2010

California residents will vote in November on whether or not to legalize marijuana. If they do vote "yes," says Harvard economics professor Jeffrey Miron, that should only be the beginning.

All drugs should be legalized nationwide, Miron says. Pot, cocaine, LSD, crystal-meth --- you name it.

"Legalizing drugs would save roughly $41.3 billion per year in government expenditure on enforcement of prohibition. Of these savings, $25.7 billion would accrue to state and local governments, while $15.6 billion would accrue to the federal government," Miron claims in a recent Cato Institute report he co-authored.

According to their website, "The report also estimates that drug legalization would yield tax revenue of $46.7 billion annually, assuming legal drugs were taxed at rates comparable to those on alcohol and tobacco. Approximately $8.7 billion of this revenue would result from legalization of marijuana and $38.0 billion from legalization of other drugs."

But won't we become a nation of drug addicts?

No, says Miron. Walk down any city street and you can already buy legal drugs in multiple establishments: Caffeine at Starbucks, nicotine at the supermarket, alcohol at bars and restaurants. And we're not ALL addicted to all of these drugs.

Our current drug policy doesn't work, Miron observes. Despite ~$40 billion spent on enforcement and prosecution, drug use is still widespread. Meanwhile, because the products are illegal, they're dangerous, low-quality, and unregulated, and they generate zero tax revenue.

Legalizing drugs would solve those problems, Miron says. It would help close the budget deficit. And it would eliminate a bizarre double standard, in which Americans are encouraged to drink and smoke themselves to death -- while guzzling addictive coffee and tea -- but become criminals if they dare to get stoned.