DESPITE ALL THE EVIDENCE

I'll admit to being one of the multitude of fans who have made shows
like "NCIS" and "CSI" such hits. It isn't that I don't recognize how
unrealistic they are; no publicly financed lab could afford such
cutting-edge equipment even if someone invented it. But I love
watching the search for hard evidence, and the characters'
willingness to abide by what that evidence shows even when the result
is to exonerate some really unattractive suspect.

Wouldn't it be nice if those we elect to make policy were similarly
devoted to evidence-based decision-making?

In the real world, unlike the televised version, policymakers
routinely disregard research that doesn't match their ideological
preferences. I'm not talking about a couple of studies where the
results are ambiguous, or subject to conflicting interpretation. I'm
talking about policies where the evidence is copious and expert
consensus compelling. Global climate change is one such area; our
incredibly expensive drug war is another.

Some years ago, I got a call from a teacher in Northern Indiana who
wanted to arrange a public forum on the pros and cons of our punitive
drug policies. In private conversations, the chief of police, a local
judge and the prosecutor had all told him that prohibition simply
doesn't work. Not one of them, however, would repeat those sentiments
in public. My students who are police officers consistently tell me
that alcohol, which is regulated but legal, is a much greater problem
than marijuana, because people are more aggressive when they are
boozed up than when they are zoned out.

The fiscal consequences of our current policies are staggering. In
2005, an economics professor at Harvard reported that replacing
marijuana prohibition with a system of taxation and regulation
similar to that used for alcohol would produce combined savings and
tax revenues between $10 billion and $14 billion per year. Estimates
from a variety of sources are that marijuana prohibition costs U.S.
taxpayers nearly $42 billion dollars a year in criminal justice costs
and lost tax revenues. This is just from marijuana prohibition -- not
efforts to control harder drugs.

It's estimated that the money spent annually on the drug war would
pay for a million additional teachers.

Then there are the opportunity costs. Indiana used to have a robust
hemp industry. Hemp is an enormously versatile and useful product
that cannot be smoked or used as a recreational drug, but our
indiscriminate policies outlaw its growth. They also prohibit use of
marijuana to alleviate the side effects of chemotherapy.

Other states have begun to rethink these policies. Fifteen states
have legalized medical marijuana. Oakland, Calif., has begun
assessing a sales tax on marijuana sold in marijuana dispensaries.

I recently had a call from a group hoping to convince the Indiana
legislature to revisit policies on medical marijuana. The caller
asked what the evidence showed.

I told him that the evidence conclusively demonstrated two things:
that the drug war is costly and counterproductive, and that in
politics -- unlike television -- evidence is irrelevant and ideology rules.