Legalizing Marijuana: Government Will Screw It Up
I see that a new law was passed by voters on last November's ballot that essentially "decriminalizes" marijuana possession in the state of Massachusetts. I still don't really understand the subtle differences between "legalizing" and "decriminalizing" marijuana, especially given this explanation of the new law in press accounts:
"The marijuana decriminalization law passed in a referendum last November by state voters would mean offenders caught with such marijuana amounts would only face a ticket and related fine, The Boston Globe said."
Huh? So it's decriminalized by there's still a ticket and related fine for those in possession of marijuana even with the new law? What has changed?
This policy seems likely to be the latest baby step on a pathway that ultimately leads to marijuana legalization. In theory, I'm supportive of that idea, both on the grounds of personal freedom and in avoiding the prosecution, and often imprisonment, of nonviolent drug offenders. But in recent years I've come to the realization that government would be completely ineffective in successfully overseeing a responsible legalization plan.
Government's primary motivation in legalizing marijuana would be to legislate itself a new revenue pinata. "Legalize it....and then tax the hell out of it" is the rallying cry likely to be heard by supportive federal and state lawmakers. By following this course, they will render null and void all the benefits of legalization. In this case of obscenely overtaxed cigarettes today, a black market has emerged and proliferated, making cigarette smuggling the fastest-growing criminal enterprise in America today. In the future case of obscenely overtaxed legalized marijuana, the existing black market will not go away. It will still be able to distribute marijuana to consumers at a local cost than the post-sin tax legalized product. Bottom line: there is no net benefit to anybody for legalizing marijuana.
I have no use for marijuana myself and am agnostic on its prevalence in society, but nonetheless usually yield on the side of personal freedom when there's a debate on the legal availability of a demanded consumer product. I would be more than happy to see a responsible marijuana legalization plan emerge, but have zero confidence that it would be anything other than a house of cards created by revenue-grubbing lawmakers that would be guaranteed to fail as a public policy measure.
"The marijuana decriminalization law passed in a referendum last November by state voters would mean offenders caught with such marijuana amounts would only face a ticket and related fine, The Boston Globe said."
Huh? So it's decriminalized by there's still a ticket and related fine for those in possession of marijuana even with the new law? What has changed?
This policy seems likely to be the latest baby step on a pathway that ultimately leads to marijuana legalization. In theory, I'm supportive of that idea, both on the grounds of personal freedom and in avoiding the prosecution, and often imprisonment, of nonviolent drug offenders. But in recent years I've come to the realization that government would be completely ineffective in successfully overseeing a responsible legalization plan.
Government's primary motivation in legalizing marijuana would be to legislate itself a new revenue pinata. "Legalize it....and then tax the hell out of it" is the rallying cry likely to be heard by supportive federal and state lawmakers. By following this course, they will render null and void all the benefits of legalization. In this case of obscenely overtaxed cigarettes today, a black market has emerged and proliferated, making cigarette smuggling the fastest-growing criminal enterprise in America today. In the future case of obscenely overtaxed legalized marijuana, the existing black market will not go away. It will still be able to distribute marijuana to consumers at a local cost than the post-sin tax legalized product. Bottom line: there is no net benefit to anybody for legalizing marijuana.
I have no use for marijuana myself and am agnostic on its prevalence in society, but nonetheless usually yield on the side of personal freedom when there's a debate on the legal availability of a demanded consumer product. I would be more than happy to see a responsible marijuana legalization plan emerge, but have zero confidence that it would be anything other than a house of cards created by revenue-grubbing lawmakers that would be guaranteed to fail as a public policy measure.
posted by Mark at 1:19 PM
7 Comments:
You are not taking into account the economics of legalization. While illegal, product X is in shorter supply as there is a much higher risk for supplying it.
If made legal, the supply would increase as mainstream investors will invest in this new industry just as they did when prohibition ended because the risk had dropped to tolerable levels. As the supply and availability increases, the price drops. This price drop can be completely dissolved by taxing pot back up to illegal prices. It would probably be about a 20% tax so roughly $1000 per pound.
There is no black market for alcohol at all and none for cigarettes that I've ever heard of and here in NYC and smokes are $9 bucks a pack!
The MJ equivalent of Anheiser-Busch would appear (maybe even as a subsidiary of Phillip Morris or Anheiser) and would provide the public with all the varieties of pot that the market demands and there would be no reason at all to meet the sketchy guy who sells and commits many more illegal deeds than MJ sales any more.
On top of the tax revenue, $10 Billion, with a B, will be saved yearly by local, state and federal governments as they will no longer have to waste this money and time in arresting, prosecuting, imprisoning and paying for the health care of millions of innocent criminals.
Wow....you live in New York City and you're not familiar with the black market for cigarettes? Estimates run as high as 50% of all New York City tobacco transactions involve smuggled cigarettes due to the massive disparity between cartons of cigarettes that have a global market value of $6 selling for more than $85 a carton in New York City.
Tobacco smuggling is the fastest-growing criminal enterprise in America, and funnels literally hundreds of millions of dollars into the pockets of organized crime and the terrorist group Hezbollah, which has a smuggling apparatus that runs like a Swiss watch. I suppose you can be forgiven for not realizing this was going on, however. The rabidly antismoking media virtually never reports on it and government officials remain hush on it because they don't want to risk their billions of dollars worth of tobacco tax loot every year. Here are a couple links to show you just how pervasive the problem is...and why I suspect we will see the same situation unfold in the event of marijuana legalization.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A23384-2004Jun7?language=printer
http://www.mackinac.org/article.aspx?ID=10005
Most of your points would be very persuasive absent the insatiable revenue lust by government and the fact that marijuana legalization would be made law for one purpose and one purpose only...so that government can get their cut. Much as is the case with cigarettes today, increasing sin taxes on marijuana would be the path of least resistance for politicians and the pot would quickly be taxed well above existing street value. It would take no more than five years after legalization for the guy on the street to be able to undercut the prices of legal post-sin tax marijuana.
And again, it's a great theory that legalized marijuana would cut costs for imprisoning nonviolent offenders, but again I point to existing policy on tobacco and the corresponding black market. New York City has entire squads of its police force whose primary objective is to bust tobacco smugglers. In other words, they won't reduce their "sin taxes" in response to black market formation, they'll simply "crack down" on smugglers and "stiffen penalties". In other words, we'll still probably be locking up "drug mules" in the marijuana black market, perhaps with even harsher penalties today, after its legalized if these smugglers have the unmitigated gall to threaten government's sin tax bounty.
Well I'm glad you can forgive my ignorance as I do not smoke cigarettes and have never bought a pack in NYC. Very interesting this smuggling scheme:
"Cigarette trafficking is difficult to stop, partly because tobacco is a legal commodity. Smuggling cigarettes becomes a federal crime only when more than 60,000 cigarettes, or 300 cartons, are purchased to avoid payment of state tax, said Jerry Bowerman, chief of the ATF alcohol and tobacco enforcement branch" -
from http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A23384-2004Jun7?language=printer
It seems if congress (state or fed) wanted to legislate a harsher penalty or a lower threshold for the constitution of a federal crime (say down to 100 cartons) it would solve the problem, or at least the part of the problem attributed to tobacco's legality, according to Mr. Bowerman.
Another solution would be to regulate the tax on a federal level. It could be kept at a constant percentage throughout the U.S. and distributed to the states and local governments proportionat to sales. Easier said than done I'm sure but if it was/is such a problem, the political will can be found to get it done.
All of these regulations could be applied to pot and I have to ask why do you think this smuggling dynamic doesnt exist with alcohol?
The article (from 2004 mind you) states that the smokes are purchased legitimately in VA, then transported. So, the VA government gets what they expected in tax revenue (and gas tax revenue for transport) correct? What do you think would happen if cigs were illegal? Who would get the tax revenues then? Apparently, Hezbolah.
As for the argument that we will be prosecuting people for trafficking pot even if legal: Good! We should! I find it quite unethical to be making insane amounts of money off of black market MJ deals. But what we would not do if legalization happened, is arrest, incarcerate, try, convict, and imprison (which all cost $$$) people for simple possession which makes up 90% of MJ arrests in this country as it is.
I'm not sure if you appreciate the breadth of what I'm saying here. Government will tax marijuana so high, as they are with cigarettes, that the exact same criminal apparatus being locked up in prisons today will continue to exist 10 years from now in the event of legalization, and may in fact grow. The $10 billion you originally claimed would be saved in arresting, prosecuting, and imprisoning marijuana users would ultimately not be saved. We'd still be locking the same people up for operating within the still-functioning marijuana black market.
When it comes to smuggling, whether it be overtaxed cigarettes today or hypothetically overtaxed marijuana after it becomes legal, is to drive a stake through the heart of the "sin tax". It's a deranged and unethical way of raising revenue and the endemic growth of "sin taxes" after they are first imposed lends itself to smuggling and the artificial creation of black market felons who would not exist if legal products were sold at market value. So rather than drawing up complicated plans for the feds to impose monolithic national cigarette tax rates over the states, they should simply kill the tax entirely, or at least drop it to a rate that is negligible to the continuity of current smuggling operations.
The course we're on ensures that not only will we fail to reduce incarceration rates for marijuana and narcotics trafficking, we'll be building new prisons at even faster rate to lock up people smuggling Pall Malls. Do you wanna live in America where hundreds of thousands are people are filling up prisons for the crime of transporting Marlboros from North Carolina to New York City? Not me thank you very much.
You act like all government is as greedy as Bernie Madoff!
Again, 90% of MJ arrests are for mere possession. Not trafficking, not sales, not even possession with intent to distribute. Just simple possession for personal use pulls tens of thousands of Americans out of their lives, away from their jobs and families that depend on them, and thrusts them into our inadequate justice system for years at a time.
The equivalent of this (under legalization) would be if cigarette smokers were sent away for having as much as half a smuggled smoke in their pocket. Because they are legal to possess, this does not and would not happen.
I asked a friend of mine who i recently discovered gets his smokes on the black market and he doesnt fear any retribution from the law at all.
You have no evidence that government would tax pot beyond current illegal prices besides what a few states have done to try to be seen as doing what they can to curb the use of a known carcinogen.
The lawmakers (Barney Frank D-Mass, Bernie Sanders I-Vermont and two other Congressmen/women from CA that I cannot recall at the moment) who have introduced pot legislation in the past have not proposed such a tax burden at all. In fact, for the two markets (tobacco and pot) to be comparible, government would have to tax pot enough to DOUBLE the current illegal prices as cigs in VA are roughly $4 and in NYC they are $8 or more.
The real bottom line here is that pot is much less harmful than alcohol and tobacco in every way, has far fewer side effects, has MANY medicinal properties and should be at least as legal as the other two. Its government's job to get it regulated in an effective and efficient manner.
I'm not anti-government or anti-revenue, I just think sin taxes are regressive, hypocritical, predatory, counterproductive, and inevitably lead to budgetary dependence on human vices and the formation of black markets. I don't consume ANY of the substances currently subject to sin taxes (or marijuana which will be if it's ever legalized), yet I would prefer to pay higher taxes myself in other venues than see others subjected to these immoral sin taxes.
Let's assume you're correct that 90% of all marijuana arrests are connected to possession. What percent of the people serving time in prison for marijuana are there for simple possession? It's true that legalization of marijuana would likely bring an end to arresting those who purchase black market marijuana, but it won't slow the rate of prison construction or the millions of dollars wasted locking up those convicted of nonviolent marijuana crimes connected to selling and the like. My contention is that the rate of imprisonment will not slow with legalization due to the continuity of black markets, and the bourgeoning black market for legalized tobacco represents a pretty good case study of what's to come by my estimation.
Your friend doesn't fear any retribution from the law for buying black market cigs and probably won't in the immediate future, but the guy providing him those black market cigs does...and will likely face prison time if caught. In other words, the tobacco black market is treated much like the marijuana black market in every other aspect but simple possession and the low-level arrests that account for small potatoes in the overall costs of the drug war.
Given that marijuana is not yet legal and not subject to any tax, telling me "you have no evidence!!!!" regarding my hypothetical that government would impose massive sin taxes on marijuana if it ever is legalized is not only obvious, but kind of silly. It's especially silly when you weigh every aspect of anecdotal evidence suggesting that taxes on legalized marijuana would indeed be massive, such as, you know, the fact that everybody who has ever supported marijuana legalization always tags along the addendum "...and then tax the hell out of it." Do you really believe that if legalized, government would see to it that marijuana taxes would remain lower than current oppressive tobacco taxes? Seriously?
Obviously those proposing marijuana legislation don't propose this in the first stage of liberalizing laws, but be sure that if it passed, sin tax legislation would quickly follow. Not only sin tax legislation, but a well-funded campaign to trash marijuana as a deadly product as a means to further raise taxes on it. Defamation of "Big Tobacco" is a multibillion industry in this country...and if government and insurance companies can profit from defaming marijuana the way they do tobacco, it's a no-brainer that the same herculean efforts will be undertaken to do so.
You and I agree on the fact that, if done wisely, marijuana legalization would be an improvement over current policy. But I submit that anyone who doesn't think that legalized marijuana will be dealt the same level of organized smackdown as tobacco has in the last 15 or so years is incredibly naive. My guess is that the majority of marijuana consumers will be longing for the good old days of the substance being illegal within five years after its legalization.
The way I see it, if they just gave legalization a try, just to see what happens over the next, say 5 years, what do we stand to loose? Kids already get thier hands on it one way or another!!! When I was in highschool (2000 graduate) it was easier to get a bag of marijuana or a gram of meth than a case of beer. Hello! Our drug policies are failing miserably the way they are set up right now, I don't see much debate on that issue, correct? The big issue seems to be our youth and protecting our youth from this, that or the other thing, well how about keeping our kids away from gangs, keeping our kids in school, and making sure that there is appropriate rehabillitation facilities for the people who need rehab? How many people are in rehab because some court tells them they have to be there for marijuana? Marijuana is not the same as meth, cocaine, heroin, pills, extacy, or psycadellics, and shouldn't require the help of a rehabillitation facility for detox. Just one simple arguement should be able to put this debate right to bed... If alcohol is legal, so should marijuana. That's it! Has anyone, ever in the history of marijuana ever gotten intoxticated off marijuana and not remembered what they did the night before? Little story about a 20 something year old kid from the Minneapolis area that came to our town for nursing school. He went on a "party bus" for Halloween night, ends up getting in a fight, wakes up the next day, finds out there's been a homicide and he's the suspect, then gets interrogated, and finally charged in the beating death of a man that was unrecognizable to his loved ones he was beaten so badly. This perticular instance ended in this kid being found not guilty and the real guys who done it are still at large thanks to the fact that "no one can remember what exactly happened". Not to mention that one of the real suspects is a judge's son!!! What the jury found is that the guy charged with the murder was actually beaten as well as the guy who died by 3 individuals who are "unidentified", however they were questioned and released. So, in a nut shell, a kid goes to a bar, gets razzed by 3 guys, beaten up by these 3 guys, a guy came to his aid, the guy that saves this kid's ass gets beaten to death, and the innocent kid gets the blame for the murder? Not to mention his name put in the paper, on the news, the lawyer bills, and the time lost in school all over alcohol. And yes, it is all over alcohol, because wihout alcohol there would have been no fight, no need for the victim to step in, and if there was a fight there would have been credible witnesses, not the "I was drunk and don't remember excuse". Which is the hands down most piss poor excuse for anything by the way.
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