MILTON FRIEDMAN: LEGALIZE IT!

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - A founding father of the Reagan Revolution has put his
John Hancock on a pro-pot report.

Milton Friedman leads a list of more than 500 economists from around the
U.S. who today will publicly endorse a Harvard University economist's
report on the costs of marijuana prohibition and the potential revenue
gains from the U.S. government instead legalizing it and taxing its sale.
Ending prohibition enforcement would save $7.7 billion in combined state
and federal spending, the report says, while taxation would yield up to
$6.2 billion a year.

The report, "The Budgetary Implications of Marijuana Prohibition,"
(available at www.prohibitioncosts.org) was written by Jeffrey A. Miron, a
professor at Harvard , and largely paid for by the Marijuana Policy Project
(MPP), a Washington, D.C., group advocating the review and liberalization
of marijuana laws.

At times the report uses some debatable assumptions: For instance, Miron
assumes a single figure for every type of arrest, for example, but the
average pot bust is likely cheaper than bringing in a murder or kidnapping
suspect. Friedman and other economists, however, say the overall work is
some of the best yet done on the costs of the war on marijuana.

At 92, Friedman is revered as one of the great champions of free-market
capitalism during the years of U.S. rivalry with Communism. He is also
passionate about the need to legalize marijuana, among other drugs, for
both financial and moral reasons.

"There is no logical basis for the prohibition of marijuana," the economist
says, "$7.7 billion is a lot of money, but that is one of the lesser evils.
Our failure to successfully enforce these laws is responsible for the
deaths of thousands of people in Colombia. I haven't even included the harm
to young people. It's absolutely disgraceful to think of picking up a
22-year-old for smoking pot. More disgraceful is the denial of marijuana
for medical purposes."

Securing the signatures of Friedman, along with economists from Cornell,
Stanford and Yale universities, among others, is a coup for the MPP, a
group largely interested in widening and publicizing debate over the
usefulness of laws against pot.

If the laws change, large beneficiaries might include large agricultural
groups like Archer Daniels Midland and ConAgra Foods as potential growers
or distributors and liquor businesses like Constellation Brands and Allied
Domecq, which understand the distribution of intoxicants. Surprisingly,
Home Depot and other home gardening centers would not particularly benefit,
according to the report, which projects that few people would grow their
own marijuana, the same way few people distill whiskey at home. Canada's
large-scale domestic marijuana growing industry (see "Inside Dope")
suggests otherwise, however.

The report will likely not sway all minds. The White House Office of Drug
Control Policy recently published an analysis of marijuana incarceration
that states that "most people in prison for marijuana are violent
criminals, repeat offenders, traffickers or all of the above." The office
declined to comment on the marijuana economics study, however, without
first analyzing the study's methodology.

Friedman's advocacy on the issue is limited--the nonagenarian prefers to
write these days on the need for school choice, calling U.S. literacy
levels "absolutely criminal...only sustained because of the power of the
teachers' unions." Yet his thinking on legalizing drugs extends well past
any MPP debate or the kind of liberalization favored by most advocates.

"I've long been in favor of legalizing all drugs," he says, but not because
of the standard libertarian arguments for unrestricted personal freedom.
"Look at the factual consequences: The harm done and the corruption created
by these laws...the costs are one of the lesser evils."

Not that a man of his years expects reason to triumph. Any added revenues
from taxing legal marijuana would almost certainly be more than spent, by
this or any other Congress.

"Deficits are the only thing that keeps this Congress from spending more"
says Friedman. "Republicans are no different from Democrats. Spending is
the easiest way to buy votes." A sober assessment indeed.