ECONOMIST INJECTS U. WITH DRUG LEGALIZATION VIEWS

Harvard University economics Professor Jeffrey Miron spoke to more
than 200 people Monday night about drug prohibition in the United
States and the effects legalizing drugs could have on the economy and society.

Located in the Busch Campus Center, the lecture, titled "The
Economics of Drug Legalization," focused on a positive and normative
analysis of drug prohibition and the effects it has on the black
market, while including comparisons between today's drug prohibition
and the 1920s and early 1930s alcohol prohibition.

"Alcohol prohibition is the single best episode for looking at this
question of how much does prohibition reduce the consumption of the
prohibited commodity," Miron said. "Evidence suggests maybe a 20
percent reduction in alcohol consumption during that time period.
That's not zero, but it's not enormous either."

Federal, state and local governments in the United States spend about
$49 billion each year to support prohibition, he said. They make
almost 1.8 million arrests per year on drug charges alone.
Governments also forgo about $34 billion in revenue that they could
collect if drugs were a legal commodity like alcohol or cigarettes, he said.

"Advocates claim that drug prohibition has substantial benefits,
alleged to include reducing drug use and abuse, lowering crime,
improving health and productivity and making the moral statement that
using drugs is wrong," Miron said. "At the same time, the opponents
of current policy believe that in fact drug prohibition, not the
drugs themselves, is what causes a lot of these harms."

Prohibition does not eliminate the demand or the supply for drugs, he
said. Most prohibited goods, such as alcohol under alcohol
prohibition, all continue to be supplied and demanded even under
strongly enforced prohibitions, thus forcing the market underground.

A black market economy can lead to increased violence and corruption,
income-generated crime, racial profiling and the diminished quality
control of drugs, including needles, which can lead to increased HIV
and other blood borne diseases due to unclean conditions, Miron said.

He said there is considerable evidence that prohibitions are somewhat
effective, but only moderately effective in reducing consumption.

For example, for the past 25 years in the U.S., drug prices have
fallen dramatically to a fifth or a sixth of the level they were at
in the early 1980s, Miron said.

"Over the same time period, U.S. attempts to enforce prohibition
escalated dramatically, so all those extra arrests, imprisonments and
expenditure, accompanied by the lower drug prices, was the exact
opposite of what policy was trying to accomplish, which was to raise
drug prices," he said.

Miron argued that differences in the way drug laws are enforced in
different countries do not correlate well with the amount of drug consumption.

"About nine years ago, Portugal decriminalized all drugs, not just
marijuana but cocaine, heroine and methamphetamine. They saw no
perceptible change in measures of drug use," he said. "That again
suggests that prohibition is a relatively minor deterrent of the
extent to which people use drugs."

The University's department of economics organized the lecture.
Funding for the talk came from the Class of 1970 as part of a series
of different lectures that have been held over several years.

"We were very pleased with the turnout. It's a topic we thought a lot
of students and people in the community would be interested in," said
Jeff Rubin, a University professor of economics and lecture organizer.
Josh David, a School of Arts and Sciences sophomore, enjoyed hearing
the perspective of drug prohibition from a libertarian viewpoint.

"A lot of times, you'll hear a very liberal or conservative
viewpoint," David said. "I thought many of the points were very valid
and I really enjoyed the question and answer session as well."
Miron said if drugs were legalized, he would go out and try
everything on the first day.

"I've been studying this stuff my whole life, of course I'm curious," he said.