America’s war on pot has descended into complete farce with news that marijuana now appears to be the nation’s largest cash crop. At an estimated $35 billion annually, it’s reported that the value of illegal marijuana has surpassed that of corn, wheat or soybeans, with the top pot-producing states (in order) being California, Tennessee, Kentucky, Hawaii and Washington. After decades of the government subsidizing legal crops and fighting marijuana growers, guess who’s won?
It is time to state the obvious: The “war” on pot has failed because it is a war we should never have fought in the first place.
Dictating the private behavior of adults – so long as that behavior harms no one else – usually fails, because it has no moral basis, and in the long run amoral and expensive programs don’t do well. Shouldn’t we have learned this from the nation’s failed experiment with the prohibition of alcohol?
The key question is: When should the government take away an adult’s right to make decisions about his or her own life?
The traditional American answer is that we draw the line where an individual’s actions causes harm to others.
We understand busting people who drive under the influence of drugs. We understand that cops and doctors, heavy equipment operators and airline pilots cannot have dope in their system while on duty. We understand chemotherapy patients should be forbidden to use marijuana to control nausea – well, actually, I don’t understand that last one at all. Banning drug use where it can hurt someone else makes moral sense. Banning private pot smoking has no moral basis.
The “does it harm others” question provides a bright-line test for government control of individual behavior. The test, however, is not one we always apply in practice. We are more of a nanny-nation than we like to admit. Sometimes America decides that something is so clearly harmful that we forbid its use in order to protect people against their own bad choices.
No one, however, can seriously argue that pot is “so clearly harmful.” A small number of potheads waste their life in a cloud of smoke. The vast majority of pot users suffer no serious harm – certainly not when compared to many legal activities.
For example, there is no question that for the typical American, drinking is more dangerous than using marijuana. Drinking soda pop, that is.
My back-of-the-envelope calculation is that there are enough calories in the soda pop we drink to account for 11 pounds of weight a year for every man, woman and child in the United States. Even allowing for marijuana-induced munchies, does anyone think that the damage a pot smoker does to himself comes close to the health consequences of being fat, fat, fat?
We educate people on the dangers of obesity. We don’t legislate their diets. We not only let people drink soda pop, we let them do it in public.
We educate people on the dangers of alcohol, but we let them drink. We educate people on the dangers of smoking tobacco, but we let them smoke so long as they do not impose second-hand smoke on others. Whatever may be true of harder drugs, the argument that pot is incredibly more dangerous than tobacco, alcohol or soda pop just doesn’t hold water.
When you go to war, you’d first better have a good answer to the question, “Shouldn’t I be minding my own business?” When we don’t have a good answer to that question, we tend to lose. Pot’s a lost war. It’s time to stop wasting the taxpayers’ money and time to stop treating a bad habit like it’s a crime.
Dick Startz is Castor Professor of Economics at the University of Washington. He can be reached at econcol@u.washington.edu.
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