THE PAY-ANY-PRICE PRINCIPLE

When choosing between frugality and security, history shows that
America almost always selects the latter. To paraphrase President
Kennedy, we'll pay any price and bear any burden to protect ourselves.

No doubt this was why the economic case against the Iraq invasion
failed. To many, the war debate seemed to pose a binary question:
debt or mushroom clouds? And when it's a scuffle between money
arguments and security arguments (even dishonest security arguments),
security wins every time.

Call this the Pay-Any-Price Principle -- an axiom that has impacted
all of America's wars, and now, most poignantly, its War on Drugs.
When faced with criticism of budget-busting prosecution and
incarceration costs, law enforcement agencies and private prison
interests have successfully depicted their cause as a willingness to
pay any price to jail dealers of hard narcotics.

Of course, data undermine that story line. In 2008, the FBI reported
that 82 percent of drug arrests were for possession -- not sales or
manufacturing -- and almost half of those arrests were for marijuana,
not hard drugs.

Fortunately, these numbers are seeping into the public consciousness.
Gallup's latest survey shows record support for marijuana
legalization, as more Americans see the Drug War for what it really
is: an ideological and profit-making crusade by the
Arrest-and-Incarceration Complex against a substance that is,
according to most physicians, less toxic than alcohol.

Considering both the public opinion shift and the facts about
marijuana, this should be the moment that drug policy reformers drop
their budget attacks and flip the security argument on their
opponents -- specifically, by pointing out how safety is actually
compromised by the status quo.

The good news is that some activists are making this very case.

Last week, students at 80 colleges asked their schools to reduce
penalties for marijuana possession so that they are no greater than
penalties for alcohol possession. It's a request with safety in mind:
According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism,
alcohol use by college kids contributes to roughly 1,700 deaths,
600,000 injuries and 97,000 sexual assaults every year. By contrast,
"The use of marijuana itself has not been found to contribute to any
deaths, there has never been a single fatal marijuana overdose in
history (and) all objective research on marijuana has also concluded
that it does not contribute to injuries, assaults, sexual abuse, or
violent or aggressive behavior," as the group Safer Alternative For
Enjoyable Recreation notes.

"It's time we stop driving students to drink and let them make the
rational, safer choice to use marijuana," said one student.

Now the bad news: Not every reformer is on message.

In California, where polls show most citizens support cannabis
legalization, The New York Times reports that backers of a
legalization ballot measure "will not dwell on assertions of
marijuana's harmlessness" but "rather on (the) cold cash" pot can
generate for depleted state coffers.

The problem is not these advocates' facts -- California officials
confirm that legal marijuana could generate more than $1 billion in
tax revenue. The problem goes back to the Pay-Any-Price Principle.

By downplaying the argument about giving society a safer alternative
to alcohol, California's legalization advocates are letting drug
warriors reclaim the language of security, to the point where even
liberal Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer's campaign now trumpets her
opposition to the initiative on the grounds that "she shares the
(safety) concerns of police chiefs, sheriffs and other law
enforcement officials."

A career politician, Boxer understands that if this battle reverts to
the old tax-revenue-versus-safety fight, voters will choose safety.
In other words, she gets the Pay-Any-Price Principle.

To maximize this opportune moment for drug policy changes, every
reformer must appreciate that principle, too -- and finally confront it head on.