New York Times “Freakonomics” Blog: “What Would Happen if Marijuana Were Decriminalized?”

Our own Paul Armentano is featured in this “round-table” discussion of marijuana legalization. Go read the whole thing, but for pure entertainment value, I just must clip these scaremongering questions from one of the prohibitionists (which I have numbered for sake of reading and responding):

1. Will the taxes pay for the significant increases in health and casualty insurance the experts tell us will be levied if marijuana is legalized?
2. Is the government going to hand out free marijuana to those who can’t afford it? If so, who pays for that?
3. Is it O.K. with you if the government or corporate America opens a marijuana distribution center in your neighborhood, or should they only establish them in the economically depressed areas of town?
4. Which government agency will be responsible for rigorous testing to ensure that marijuana sold in the marketplace meets the strictest of consumer standards and is free of pesticides and drugs such as LSD and PCP?
5. Which government agency is going to be responsible for taxing your next-door neighbor when he starts growing marijuana in his back yard, adjacent to your prized roses, of course?
6. What happens when the taxes on marijuana become so excessive from covering all the ancillary costs of legalization that the vast majority of users simply grow the product themselves? Then who will pay for all of this?
7. What’s the legal age limit we attach to marijuana use? Is it 18; is it 21?
8. And what do we do about the predatory narcotics traffickers who shift every “ounce” of their undivided and merciless attention to those under the authorized age limit once the drug is legalized?

1. Marijuana legalization would not lead to significant increases in health and insurance costs, because 22 million Americans are already smoking marijuana.  Those costs, if they exist, are already being paid by society with illegal marijuana that generates zero tax revenues in return  So, starting from the current baseline of X costs vs. 0 income, where X is illegal smokers now, and assuming that Y is the extra new legal smokers that legalization would attract, and Z is the tax revenue we’ll get from all the X & Y marijuana smokers, you’re saying the costs from Y will exceed the taxes generated by X + Y.  My question is, who are all these Y smokers who will suddenly start once pot is legal and how many of them do you think there are?
2. Remember when alcohol prohibition ended and the government was forced to hand out free beer to those who couldn’t afford it?  Neither do I.
3. Well, I’m cool with it.  Much cooler with a well lit, secure store with cameras and a licensed proprietor who will call police than a street corner dealer carrying a handgun.  But judging by the number of liquor stores I see in Compton vs. how many I see in Beverly Hills, I’ll bet you’re not cool with it.
4. Uh, the one that sets those same standards for tobacco?  You do know that pesticides, LSD (really?), and PCP adulterated cannabis is a direct result of it being illegal and not government tested, right?
5. Uh, the one that sets those same standards for sales taxes on your neighbor’s home beer brewing kit and accessories?
6. Did you know that the taxes on a pack of smokes in New York City is $4.25?  I’m not aware of one single backyard or closet tobacco garden in New York City.  Marijuana growing isn’t easy; most everyone who smokes will want to buy it in a store, and I’ve already debunked the “ancillary costs” worry.
7. I’d say 18, but I could accept 21.  Either way, it would be better than the current age limit of “able to hand $20 bill to pot dealer.”
8. Let’s do to them what we did to Al Capone and the bootleggers when the end of alcohol prohibition had them all selling beer to high school students.  Or when we raised the drinking age to 21; remember all those rum dealers that filled the high school parking lots?  C’mon now!  11.76% of people who smoked marijuana in the past thirty days are between the ages of 12-17.  You mean to tell me that when 88.24% of the marijuana business goes legit, weed dealers will survive by focusing on kids?  Tell me any other business that could survive with only one out of eight of their current customers.  Now tell me how the weed dealers are going to generate eight times the revenue they previously did from kids when the legalized product will be priced much lower than what they’re selling to kids now.  At worst what we’d have is what we have with alcohol – kids that steal it from their parents’ liquor cabinet or get an adult to buy it for them – and with that we’d at least have checks for ID, punishment for the adults, and a product of guaranteed purity and measured potency, instead of now, where one kid sells to another kid a baggie of marijuana of unknown origins.