          
National prohibition of alcohol (1920-33)--the "noble
experiment"--was undertaken to reduce crime and corruption, solve social
problems, reduce the tax burden created by prisons and poorhouses, and improve
health and hygiene in America. The results of that experiment clearly indicate
that it was a miserable failure on all counts. The evidence affirms sound
economic theory, which predicts that prohibition of mutually beneficial
exchanges is doomed to failure.
Those results are documented from a variety of sources, most of which,
ironically, are the work of supporters of Prohibition--most economists and
social scientists supported it.
Mark Thornton is the O. P. Alford III
Assistant Professor of Economics at Auburn University.
  
What else could we spend $42 billion each year on? Health insurance for kids?
Better paid teachers? It's our choice.
What would you buy if you had an extra $42 billion to spend every year? What
might our government buy if it suddenly had that much money dropped onto its lap
every year?
For one thing, it might pay for the entire $7 billion annual increase in the
State Children's Health Insurance Program that President Bush vetoed because of its cost -- and there'd still be $35 billion left over.
Or perhaps you'd hire 880,000 schoolteachers at the average U.S. teacher
salary of $47,602 per year.
Or give every one of our current teachers a 30 percent raise ( at a cost of $15
billion, according to the American Federation of Teachers ) and use what's left
to take a $27 billion whack out of the federal deficit.
Or use all $42 billion for a massive tax cut that would put an extra $140 in the
pockets of every person in the country -- $560 for a family of four.
The mind reels at the ways such a massive sum of money could be put to use.
Why $42 billion? Because that's what our current marijuana laws cost American
taxpayers each year, according to a new study by researcher Jon Gettman, Ph.D.
-- $10.7 billion in direct law enforcement costs, and $31.1 billion in lost tax
revenues. And that may be an underestimate, at least on the law
enforcement side, since Gettman made his calculations before the FBI released
its latest arrest statistics in late September. The new FBI stats show an
all-time record 829,627 marijuana arrests in 2006, 43,000 more than in 2005.
That's like arresting every man, woman and child in the state of North Dakota
plus every man, woman, and child in Des Moines, Iowa on marijuana charges ...
every year. Arrests for marijuana possession -- not sales or trafficking,
just possession -- totaled 738,916. By comparison, there were 611,523
arrests last year for all violent crimes combined.
Basing his calculations mainly on U.S. government statistics, Gettman
concludes that marijuana in the U.S. is a $113 billion dollar business.
That's a huge chunk of economic activity that is unregulated and untaxed because
it's almost entirely off the books.
Of course, the cost of our marijuana laws goes far beyond lost tax revenues and
money spent on law enforcement. By consigning a very popular product --
one that's been used by about 100 million Americans, according to government
surveys -- to the criminal underground, we've effectively cut legitimate
businesspeople out of the market and handed a monopoly to criminals and gangs.
Strangely, government officials love to warn us that some unsavory characters
profit off of marijuana sales, while ignoring the obvious: Our prohibitionist
laws handed them the marijuana business in the first place, effectively giving
marijuana dealers a $113 billion free ride.
All this might make some sense if marijuana were so terribly dangerous that it
needed to be banned at all costs, but science long ago came to precisely the
opposite conclusion. Compared to alcohol, for example, marijuana is
astonishingly safe. For one thing, marijuana is much less addictive than
alcohol, with just nine percent of users becoming dependent, as opposed to 15
percent for booze. And marijuana is much less toxic. Heavy drinking
is well-documented to damage the brain and liver, and to increase the risk of
many types of cancer. Marijuana, on the other hand, has never caused a
medically documented overdose death, and scientists are still debating whether
even heavy marijuana use causes any permanent harm at all. And then
there's violence. Again, the scientific findings are overwhelming: Booze
incites violence and aggression; marijuana doesn't.
Despite all that, we now arrest one American every 38 seconds on marijuana
charges. And we do so at a staggering cost in law enforcement expenses,
lost tax revenues, and staggering profits for criminal gangs. FACTS by MP.
Please Ask Congress for a moment of CLARITY! 
Click here to speak out!
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