LEGALIZE MARIJUANA? ARE YOU HIGH?

Was there ever a miracle drug to match marijuana? A few puffs on a
legalized, regulated and taxed joint, and you've not only closed the
billion-dollar budget holes faced by government but you've eliminated
the economic driver behind much of the criminal activity plaguing the globe.

Or so the sizeable and increasing population of Hemp Head Nation
would have you believe.

Decriminalization, legalization, whatever the term du jour, it's all
the fashion these days in political circles. The new mayor of Seattle
is in favor of it. Legislators from the Puget Sound region have
introduced a legalization bill (one of the sponsors was quoted in an
Associated Press dispatch as saying she wants to start a "strong
conversation" on the topic; in modern political parlance,
"conversation" usually means hectoring monologue or lecture). In
Oregon, several efforts are under way to get a measure on the ballot
to legalize weed.

We'll set aside for another day discussion of the health and societal
implications of legalizing marijuana, other than to note the
contrasting trends of allowing, even encouraging, increased use of
one combustible commodity while smoking another substance - tobacco -
seems headed for its own Prohibition.

Also up for debate - sorry, "conversation" - is the notion that much
of the real world is as sanguine about the impact of increased drug
use as the chattering classes seem to be (try convincing your average
parent, especially those with teenagers, that society's collective
shoulder-shrug toward drug use is a good idea).

But we can certainly have a "conversation" about the economic
arguments made to justify legalization - and dispense with them.

No. 1: A little legalized vice is worth it if it pays the bills.
Think of all the revenue to be had by taxing marijuana. If it seems
as though there's an echo in here, there is. You've heard this
argument before - with state lotteries. It might be easier to list
the states in which the lottery wasn't sold as the permanent answer
to the problem of how to fund public education.

It wasn't. Marijuana sales-tax revenue won't be either. Even if you
believe the estimates of the marijuana trade currently, it's a reach
to believe all those sales will automatically transfer to legal channels.

Furthermore, sales may not be nearly as large as hoped for. No matter
how blissfully stoned happy faces proponents try to slap on packages
of legal marijuana, and the use thereof, cannabis consumption will
continue to carry some societal opprobrium. And those who continue to
indulge may decide they'd rather smoke unregulated, untaxed, cheaper
weed. Another potential reduction of revenue: States trying to goose
sales and tax revenues may wind up undercutting one another on the
tax cut they take, much the way some states compete on the taxes they
levy on booze. Which leads us to this argument...

No. 2: Like marijuana use, we can stop with marijuana legalization.
Marijuana may not be the gateway to harder stuff for all users, but
legalized vice rarely pauses in the doorway. To understand why this
is so, let's go back to the example of legalized gambling, where
states are already engaged in an unending, unwinnable race to the bottom.

The next state over introduces a lottery? Fine, we'll boost the
stakes and promote ours more heavily. They match us? Fine, we'll
expand to more exotic forms of gambling. Them too? Fine, we'll opt
for casinos, slots at horse-race tracks, slots wherever there's a
sucker with money to drop. Which might provoke our neighbors to
leapfrog us with ever more prevalent gambling. Which we'll somehow
have to meet or exceed.

We will if we want to maintain our revenue from gambling, that is.
The same phenomenon will occur with marijuana legalization. Once most
states have legalized it and the tax high doesn't thrill like it used
to, states like Washington desperate for a revenue fix will start
looking for something else to push into the hands, and mouths, of its
citizenry.

What next are you prepared to legalize? Won't that be a lovely
"conversation" to have.

No. 3: Look at what drug-motivated crime is doing not just in the
U.S. but around the world. If you legalize marijuana, you take away
the profit motive behind drug-related crime. This is the big one, an
argument compelling even to those uncomfortable with the "smoke 'em
if you got 'em" attitude toward marijuana. Making the argument all
the more attractive is the money spent on and supposed futility of
the War on Drugs.

Attractive, but not valid. Crime gangs may be happy to walk away from
the marijuana trade, a bulky, low-value commodity, in favor of other
higher-value, easier-to-make-and-move substances.

They are not, however, likely to throw up their hands, say "You win,
you're too smart for us," and walk away from a lucrative trade
they've cultivated, unless you're prepared to legalize the sale of
everything that the populace might turn into a mind-altering material.

And even then, that won't chase crime away. Organized crime can make
a healthy business out of illicit traffic in legal-and-regulated
items - like cigarettes, in which there's been a lively tax-dodging
trade for decades.

(Since the unhappy experience of alcohol's Prohibition always gets
tossed into the debate, we ought to consider why illicit traffic in
alcohol didn't persist after repeal. Here's a theory: Alcohol is
bulky, heavy and not easy to produce at a quality level in sufficient
quantities to slake Americans' thirst. The commercial ventures that
legally produced beer, wine and spirits before Prohibition went back
to doing so after repeal. Production of marijuana and similar items
was never done on a legal, commercial scale.)

The forces pushing for marijuana legalization will do so with
arguments ranging from personal freedom to lack of harm to
individuals or society at large. There are cases to be made on both
sides of those debating points. But when it comes to the economic
rationalization for legalizing and taxing the tokers, the proponents'
case is filled with bottles of another well-known American cure-all
elixir - snake oil.