THE $4 BILLION WAR ON POT

Enforcing Marijuana Laws Costs More And More Every Year. And For What?

Crime in America has declined significantly in the last 15 years -- that is
to say, serious crime, "Part I Crime" in law-enforcement terms: rape,
murder, robbery, automobile theft, and such. Arrests for those crimes are
down 24 percent since 1990.

But arrests of those who use, carry, distribute, or transport marijuana
have more than doubled, from 327,000 in 1990 to 697,000 in 2002. In fact,
according to a report released in May by Washington, DC-based think tank
The Sentencing Project, 82 percent of the increase in drug arrests during
those years is attributable to marijuana arrests -- 79 percent from
marijuana possession arrests. The US spends $4 billion each year on the
arrest, prosecution, and incarceration of marijuana-law offenders,
according to The Sentencing Project report. That's about six times the
amount spent globally on AIDS-vaccine research and development.
Massachusetts alone could save $120 million a year by legalizing the drug,
according to a study by Jeffrey Miron, economics professor at Boston
University. (And collect another $17 million by taxing it.) It is unlikely
that this is what constituents have had in mind as they've watched more and
more of their tax dollars go toward drug control.

Barely A Dent

Much of this spending, particularly at the federal level, goes to busting
marijuana-trafficking rings.

Last November, for instance, two undercover agents from the Boston office
of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Drug Smuggling Group
drove a tractor-trailer filled with pot from a warehouse in Laredo, Texas,
to the parking lot of the Tage Inn in Somerville. That operation led to 10
arrests, and the seizure of 1500 pounds of smuggled marijuana. What that
didn't do, of course, is reduce the use of marijuana in Massachusetts,
where pot smoking is higher than almost anywhere in the country -- largely,
surveys suggest, because Bay State residents view the drug as less harmful
than do denizens of other states.

Nationally, interdiction has had little effect on use or availability.
Federal authorities seized 1225 metric tons of the stuff in 2003, barely a
dent in the estimated 12,000 to 25,000 tons used. The National Drug
Intelligence Center's (NDIC) 2005 National Drug Threat Assessment describes
"steady supply of and demand for marijuana overall, and the strong, stable
market for its distribution."

On the user side, several recent studies have documented the extent of this
country's efforts to imprison people for possession or low-level selling of
pot. But perhaps the most persuasive is the US government's 40-page
attempt at a counter-argument, released last year, titled "Who's Really in
Prison for Marijuana?"

The report, by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy,
endeavors to "set the record straight" against "those who are willing to
spread false information for the purpose of legalizing drug trafficking and
use." But the document, which argues that the government is not targeting
casual pot smokers, actually shows just how little ammunition the
government has on this topic. It resorts to citing 10-year-old articles
(including a 1994 Marjorie Eagan column in the Boston Herald) as the
sources of the misinformation -- and then admits that those critics indeed
have their facts right. As the report concedes, at last count roughly
32,400 people were in state prisons for marijuana offenses, a quarter of
whom were there for possession only -- including 3600 first-time offenders.

Not a huge percentage of the prison population, but not an insignificant
number of people living at the public's expense either.

Hidden Costs?

The government argues that legalization, decriminalization (in which
possession would be allowed but trafficking would remain illegal), or
relaxed enforcement of marijuana laws would increase usage, leading to
increases in other costs, including health care, rehabilitation, crime,
and lost productivity. "When you look at a cost-benefit analysis, you need
to take those things into account," says Anthony Pettigrew, spokesperson
for the New England office of the federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).

But it's uncertain whether usage would actually spike, says Miron. And if
it does, it's unclear what societal costs would result. Pettigrew and
others point to two recent trends that supposedly illustrate the harm of
marijuana.

The first, an increase in emergency-room patients citing marijuana use as
the cause of their visit, is potentially troubling, although the reasons
and costs are not yet clear.

The second is an increase in the number of marijuana users -- particularly
younger ones -- entering rehab. "There are more teenagers entering
rehabilitation for marijuana than for alcohol or any other drug,"
Pettigrew says.

Miron maintains that such reports are misleading. "Marijuana-abuse
treatment is kind of loony," he says. "There is a surge of people entering
marijuana-abuse treatment, but they're being forced into it. They are
told, 'you can get probation [instead of jail time], if you enter
marijuana-abuse treatment.' " There is, of course, a third argument that
Pettigrew and others make, one that is as old as the hills: that more pot
use leads inevitably to use of harder drugs, like cocaine, heroin, and
crystal methamphetamine. That concern doesn't seem to be on the minds of
state and local law-enforcement agencies surveyed by the NDIC, however.
"Few consider [marijuana] a significant threat to public health and
safety," the study says. Although 95 percent of those agencies report that
marijuana is easily available in their jurisdiction, only 12 percent call
it their greatest drug threat, according to the NDIC assessment.

In fact, if harder drugs are the source of concern, the NDIC report reads
like an argument for pot legalization. The stable and very profitable black
market in marijuana provides "financial stability [for] drug traffickers,
many of whom traffic marijuana to bankroll other criminal activity," the
NDIC assessment says. Those other criminal activities include trafficking
of harder drugs, guns, and illegal weapons.

In other words, by sending pot profits to criminals, instead of legitimate
businesses, criminalization effectively enables trafficking in far more
dangerous ventures.