THE PRICE OF LEGALIZING POT IS TOO HIGH

Deterrence Is Preferable to Encouraging Marijuana Use, Which Would
Follow Alcohol and Tobacco in Soaring Costs to Society.

Last month, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger reignited a heated debate when
he called for a civilized discussion on the merits of marijuana
legalization. Indeed, the governor was responding to new public
opinion polls showing greater interest in the policy idea -- and with
the mounting problems associated with the drug trade in Mexico and
here at home, it is hard to blame anyone for suggesting that we at
least consider all potential policy solutions.

One major justification for legalization remains tempting: the money.
Unfortunately, however, the financial costs of marijuana legalization
would never outweigh its benefits. Yes, the marijuana market seems
like an attractive target for taxation -- Abt Associates, a research
firm, estimates that the industry is worth roughly $10 billion a year
- -- and California could certainly use a chunk of that cash to offset
its budget woes in the current economic climate.

What is rarely discussed, however, is that the likely increase in
marijuana prevalence resulting from legalization would probably
increase the already high costs of marijuana use in society. Accidents
would increase, healthcare costs would rise and productivity would
suffer. Legal alcohol serves as a good example: The $8 billion in tax
revenue generated from that widely used drug does little to offset the
nearly $200 billion in social costs attributed to its use.

In fact, both of our two already legal drugs -- alcohol and tobacco --
offer chilling illustrations of how an open market fuels greater
harms. They are cheap and easy to obtain. Commercialization glamorizes
their use and furthers their social acceptance. High profits make
aggressive marketing worthwhile for sellers. Addiction is simply the
price of doing business.

Would marijuana use rise in a legal market for the drug? Admittedly,
marijuana is not very difficult to obtain currently, but a legal
market would make getting the drug that much easier. Tobacco and
alcohol are used regularly by 30% and 65% of the population,
respectively, while all illegal drugs combined are used by about 6% of
Americans. In the Netherlands, where marijuana is de facto legalized,
lifetime use "increased consistently and sharply" after this policy
shift triggered commercialization, tripling among young adults,
according to data analysis from the Rand Corp. We might expect a
similar or worse result here in America's ad-driven culture.

An honest debate on marijuana policy also carefully considers the
costs of our current approach. Arrest rates for marijuana are
relatively high, reaching about 800,000 last year. Though these
numbers are technically recorded under the category of "possession,"
the story that is seldom told is that hardly any of these possession
arrests result in jail time (that is why former New York City Mayor
Rudolph Giuliani made headlines when he aggressively arrested public
marijuana users and detained them for 12 to 24 hours in the 1990s).

One of the most astute minds in the field of drug policy, Carnegie
Mellon's Jonathan Caulkins, formerly the co-director of Rand's drug
policy research center, found that more than 85% of people in prison
for all drug-law violations were clearly involved in drug
distribution, and that the records of most of the remaining prisoners
had at least some suggestion of distribution involvement (many
prisoners plea down from more serious charges to possession in
exchange for information about the drug trade). Only about half a
percent of the total prison population was there for marijuana
possession, he found. He noted that this figure was consistent with
other mainstream estimates but not with estimates from the Marijuana
Policy Project (a legalization interest group), which, according to
Caulkins, "naively ... assumes that all inmates convicted of
possession were not involved in trafficking." Caulkins concluded that
"an implication of the new figure is that marijuana decriminalization
would have almost no impact on prison populations." This is not meant
to imply that marijuana arrests do not have costs, but rather, that
these concerns have been highly exaggerated.

Finally, legalizing marijuana would in no way ensure that the most
vicious drug-related problems -- violence, economic-related crime,
street gang activity -- would disappear. Most of those problems stem
from the cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine markets. Marijuana's
share of the black market is modest (the cocaine market is three times
larger), and the money that is spent on the drug is spread over so
many users and distributors that few are working with amounts that
motivate or encourage high levels of crime.

Moving beyond the simplistic and unrealistic option of legalization,
what can we do to reduce marijuana use and the costly harms it brings?
Increasing the ferocity of enforcement isn't the answer, but
increasing its potential for effectiveness through deterrent methods
might be. Programs like Project HOPE in Hawaii, which perform regular,
random drug testing on probationers and others and implement reliable,
swift (but short) sanctions for positive screens, have shown
remarkable success. Innovative solutions, grounded in sound research
on prevention, treatment and enforcement, present the shortest route
out of marijuana-related costs. But an open market for the stuff? That
doesn't pass the giggle test.