MARIJUANA LEGALIZATION IN CALIFORNIA

In November 2010, California
voters will consider a ballot initiative that would legalize
marijuana in the state.

The proposed law includes restrictions on sale and use, such as a
minimum purchase age of 21, but the bill gives marijuana roughly the
same legal status as alcohol.

Early polls suggest the measure will pass, although full-scale debate
has not yet occurred.

Marijuana legalization is a far bigger step than decriminalization or
medicalization, which have already occurred in California and other
states. Decriminalization legalizes possession of small amounts of
marijuana, but it does not eliminate the underground market or permit
easy taxation. Medicalization is closer to legalization, but it still
leaves producers and consumers in a legal gray area and collects less
revenue than legalization. Should California, or the country, legalize
marijuana?

Yes, for a multitude of reasons.

Legalization will move the marijuana industry above ground, just as
the repeal of alcohol prohibition restored the legal alcohol industry.

A small component of the marijuana market might remain
illicit-moonshine marijuana rather than moonshine whiskey-but if
regulation and taxation are moderate, most producers and consumers
will choose the legal sector, as they did with alcohol. Legalization
would therefore eliminate most of the violence and corruption that
currently characterize marijuana markets.

These occur because, in underground markets, participants cannot
resolve disputes via non-violent mechanisms such as lawsuits,
advertising, lobbying, or campaign contributions. Instead, producers
and consumers in these markets use violence to resolve disputes with
each other and bribery or violence to resolve disputes with law
enforcement. These features of "vice" markets disappear when vice
is legal, as abundant experience with alcohol, prostitution, and
gambling all demonstrate.

Legalization would result in numerous other benefits.

Medical marijuana patients would no longer suffer legal limbo or
social stigma from using marijuana to treat nausea from chemotherapy,
glaucoma, or other conditions. Infringements on civil liberties and
racial profiling would decline, since victimless crimes are a key
cause of such police behavior.

Quality control would improve because sellers could advertise and
establish reputations for a consistent product, allowing consumers to
choose low or high-potency marijuana. Legalization would also generate
budgetary savings for state and federal governments, both by
eliminating expenditures on enforcement and by allowing taxation of
legalized sales.

I recently estimated that the net impact would be a deficit reduction
of about $20 billion per year, summed over all levels of government.

The one impact of legalization that might be undesirable is an
increase in marijuana use, but the magnitude of this increase is
likely to be modest. The repeal of alcohol prohibition in the U.S.
produced about a 20 percent increase in use, while Portugal's 2001
de facto legalization of marijuana did not cause any measurable
increase; indeed, use was lower afterward.

Across countries, use rates for marijuana show little connection to
the strictness of the prohibition regime.

The Netherlands has virtual legalization, for example, yet use rates
do not greatly differ from those in the United States. An increase in
marijuana use, moreover, is not necessarily bad. If the ballot
initiative passes, people who would like to use marijuana but abstain
due to prohibition would be able to consume responsibly; legalization
would allow them to enjoy marijuana without fear of arrest or
incarceration and without concern over quality.

Some new users might generate adverse consequences for themselves or
others, such as driving under the influence, but most irresponsible
users are disregarding the law and consuming already. Legalization
will not, of course, eliminate all negatives of marijuana use. But
just as the harms of alcohol prohibition were worse than the harms of
alcohol itself, the adverse effects of marijuana prohibition are worse
than the unwanted consequences of marijuana use. Legalization is
therefore the better policy.

The ideal way to legalize marijuana is for the federal government to
end its ban, while allowing each state to regulate and tax marijuana
as it sees fit. This would circumvent the complicated constitutional
issues that will arise if the California initiative passes, as
federal law would still prohibit marijuana.

But California's initiative is nevertheless a valuable step, since
the federal government is not yet ready to legalize.

The California bill brings attention to the issue and, if adopted,
will encourage other states and the federal government to follow suit.

The U.S. experiment with marijuana prohibition is just as misguided as
was its earlier experiment with alcohol prohibition. We learned our
lesson once; it is time to learn it again.