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.

Don Quixote has a Sun-Stroke of Genius

The country that gave us the fictional Don Quixote and his fight against windmills is coming back with a real battle between sun and oil. It seems the government of Spain is singing The Impossible Dream these days. Somehow the idea of charging the Spanish citizens 10 times the going rate for electricity is a good idea. But only when the electricity comes from the Sun. Inevitably this means Spaniards will pray for the rain to fall mainly on the plain and everywhere else, if possible, thereby cutting the cost of the electricity needed to watch The Man of La Mancha on television, or playing the soundtrack on the CD player.

Moreover, there is some truly cockeyed thinking at work in Madrid. Spain wants to switch from oil to solar power to save the country from rising oil prices. It hopes to save the nation from higher oil prices by selling electricity for 10 times the price of electricity from oil. Thus, until oil reaches $500 a barrel, it will remain cheaper than today's price for Sun-made electricity in Spain.

Meanwhile, Spain is exporting its solar technology because it believes the spread of solar technology will lead to less oil use. If Spain is right and oil loses some ground, then, like any commodity facing weakening demand, its price will drop. Therefore, it appears Spain is actually creating a market in which oil becomes less costly while solar power remains insanely expensive. At that moment Don Quixote would put a bucket over his head, point his lance at the setting Sun, put his spurs to Rosinante, and leave Sancho Panza behind to wonder what just happened?

Spanish Solar Subsidy Seduces FPL, Scorches Consumers

May 8 (Bloomberg) -- Spain has turned itself into the world’s biggest builder of solar-energy plants, attracting developers from the U.S. and France by guaranteeing prices that weigh down Spanish consumers.

The government promotes clean fuels by letting generators charge as much as 10 times more for power from the sun or wind than from burning coal. The premium, added to bills of homes and businesses, has spawned a solar-investment boom by utilities, from Florida’s FPL Group Inc. to Electricite de France SA.

As a result, developers now plan enough solar thermal projects to generate the power of nine new atomic reactors, or 14,000 megawatts if all get built, Spain’s industry ministry said. That’s the biggest project pipeline, beating sun-blessed Australia and the U.S., where Congress increased aid this year for alternative energy, an Emerging Energy Research study said.

“Who wouldn’t want to enter a business that’s paid many times more than the market rate, and where the customer is guaranteed for life?” said Gabriel Calzada, an economist and professor at Rey Juan Carlos University in Madrid.

Spanish law forces distributors to buy all clean energy produced in the first 25 years of a plant’s life and resell it to consumers. With little oil and lots of sun, Spain is betting the sacrifice will pay off as fossil fuels get more expensive and need costly emission permits under global-warming treaties.

Forty-two percent of power bills, or 95 euros ($127) for every Spaniard, will cover subsidized clean energy in 2009, the ministry estimates.

‘Heavy Price’

“We’re all paying a heavy price for green power,” said Calzada, an opponent of subsidies.

The government raised rates in May 2007 for solar thermal plants, which concentrate sunlight to make steam for power generation. They now earn about 300 euros a megawatt-hour, seven times the average rate coal- or natural gas-fired plants got this year.

A megawatt-hour supplies about 1,500 Spanish homes for an hour, or about half as many homes in the U.S.

Florida to Spain

Spain’s solar deal was interesting enough for Juno Beach, Florida-based FPL to cross the Atlantic and propose two 50- megawatt solar thermal plants. EDF, France’s biggest power company, raised its stake last year to 90 percent in Fotosolar, a Spanish photovoltaic developer. FPL, the largest U.S. producer of wind power, wouldn’t say which subsidy system it preferred.

“I would not define Spain as more or less attractive, rather it is a new opportunity,” Steven Stengel, a spokesman for FPL unit NextEra Energy Resources LLC, said in an e-mailed response. FPL plans two U.S. plants totaling 325 megawatts.

Neither country gets more than 1 percent of power yet from solar thermal or photovoltaic plants, which use a technology that turns sunlight directly into electricity. Spain installed the most of both technologies last year, trade group data shows.

U.S. Momentum

The U.S. now is regaining momentum lost almost 10 years ago when the government “changed policy, leaving solar technology on the shelf,” said Edward Soler, a business development executive for Spanish builder Abengoa SA. During that decade “Spain underwent a learning curve that was aided by a change in regulations” that improved incentives, he said.

Abengoa, which set up a 20-megawatt solar thermal plant near its Seville, Spain, headquarters, plans one 14 times that size, billed as the world’s biggest, about 60 miles outside of Phoenix to feed local utility Arizona Public Service Co.

In the U.S., where President Barack Obama backed increased incentives this year, 6,000 megawatts of solar thermal projects are under way, said Fred Morse, an official at the Washington- based Solar Energy Industries Association trade group.

Promoters in the U.S. must convince utilities to contract their power, a necessary step for most project financing. Also, they may be reimbursed for 30 percent of the plant’s cost through a tax credit or grant and can apply for federal loan guarantees. They earn no special power rate.

The U.S. can’t catch up until more rules on aid are published, Morse said.

Better Incentives

“The incentives, if implemented promptly and effectively, should greatly facilitate the financing of these plants” in the U.S., said Morse, who prepared the first study on solar energy’s potential as a national resource for the White House in 1969.

In Spain, subsidies already spurred local utility Iberdrola SA of Bilbao and Madrid-based builder Acciona SA to become the world’s largest investors in wind, ahead of FPL and EDP-Energias de Portugal SA of Lisbon, with turbines in more than 20 nations.

Premium prices for solar, wind, biomass and co-generation power will cost Spaniards 4 billion euros in 2009, the National Energy Commission regulator estimates.

Photovoltaic Boom

Iberdrola said today it completed Spain’s seventh solar thermal plant, a 50 megawatt array of cylidrical reflectors in Castellon. The new plant matches the capacity of Spain’s Andasol, the largest thermosolar plant in Europe, owned by Solar Millenium AG and Actividades de Construccion y Servicios SA.

Acciona and Heliosolar of Navarra, Spain, are among a group of developers that switched to solar thermal after doing photovoltaic projects. In two years, so many photovoltaic plants were rushed online that the Spanish government tightened rules for eligibility. For solar thermal, an unlimited number of licenses will be given out until at least 2011.

Developers bank on Spain continuing to force utilities Endesa SA, Iberdrola and Gas Natural SDG SA to buy all alternative energy produced. On especially windy or sunny days, they must ramp down coal- or natural gas-burning plants.

Brent at $40/Barrel

“All the investment in clean energy in the European Union grew from the summer of 2004, when Brent passed $40 a barrel and was giving clear price signals of a tension that wasn’t going to go away,” said Tomas Diaz, spokesman for the Spanish Photovoltaic Industry Association.

Spain’s premium price paid to photovoltaic plants drew in 20 billion euros of investment in those projects in about one year, before the government made the terms less generous in 2008, the trade association’s Diaz said.

“Cash poured in since 2007 as investors fleeing the subprime crisis in the U.S. looked for a safe haven for their money,” Diaz said.

Even the U.S. insurer American International Group Inc., bailed out last year by the Federal Reserve, bought 300 megawatts of solar plants in Spain that it has since sold.