Legalization Without Indemnification Is Totally Irresponsible

By Clifford Thornton, Efficacy

The recent push to decriminalize and legalize drugs, especially marijuana, has picked
up steam all over the world. These drug prohibition reform efforts, while motivated
by the massive harms caused by prohibition, are incomplete remedies if limited to
criminal justice reform. A major aspect of prohibition's harm is economic, and among
the remedies which reform needs to include is financial relief for prohibition's victims.
Fortunately, reform offers an opportunity for funding efforts to relieve the harm of
prohibition, without raising taxes.

Prohibition reform is gaining mainstream recognition with growing visibility and
momentum. California Governor Schwarzenegger said legalization has to be put on
the table. Rhode Island has created a marijuana prohibition commission that within
months will formally address  outright legalization.  Portugal has decriminalized small
amounts of formerly illegal drugs, along with Mexico and Argentina. Many countries
in the European Union now have such policies on the table for consideration.

But in the United States the drug reform movement, if one can call it that, is sharply
focused on marijuana and not on drug prohibition as a whole. Unfortunately this
focus ignores three other longstanding and devastating social issues. First, drug war
policies have needlessly taken potential taxpayers out of the community and spent tax
money to keep them in prison. Second, twenty million children have been orphaned
because one or both parents have been sent to prison on drug related charges.
Third, in that process of economic and family disintegration, public and higher
education have been dramatically shortchanged.

As a result, billions of dollars that could have funded education and health care,
instead have been consumed by law enforcement for punishment that has worsened
community safety and health. We have taken countless young people out of our
community on drug charges and wonder why they and their contemporaries no
longer have faith in our criminal justice system. Our children are not stupid; they see
two forms of justice, one for the well-connected, and one for the poor. Society will
pay for this perception of injustice for decades to come.

Beyond the human tragedies, reform must not forget the impact of the Drug
Prohibition War on local economies. The police chiefs of Camden, Newark,
Philadelphia, and Los Angeles have said that parts of their cities would collapse
financially without the illegal drug trade. It's one thing to knock someone on the head
for money to buy drugs, but it's a different thing to do it to buy bread. Stopping drug
arrests and imprisonment is only a step in the right direction. If drugs are legalized,
the illegal drug economy  would need to be replaced.

Using Connecticut as an example we can see the potential for using reform to
generate financial relief for prohibition's victims. Studies show the Nutmeg State has
three and half million residents with over a six hundred million dollar prison budget.
The prison population, some 17,000, with seventy percent serving time for drug
related charges, presents a goldmine of economic opportunity. We must also
remember that in the late eighties to early nineties Connecticut spent a billion dollars
to build prisons, with luck never to be repeated.

When illegal drugs are one day legalized, medicalized and decriminalized, that reform
will present the state a windfall of around four hundred million dollars per year. All of
following could be accomplished with the stroke of a pen. Reform's savings from
reducing the incidence and cost of prison could mean a million dollar health policy for
every man, woman and child. Reform savings could mean a hundred million dollars
toward free tuition and fees for everyone who wishes to go to college. Reform could
free up a hundred million dollars toward the funding of our public school system with
one teacher and assistant per ten pupils grades K-8. Reform could divert from the
criminal justice's response to drug use a hundred million dollars toward providing
those after school programs which are so direly needed, filled with athletics,
academic and social programs that are missing today.

There would also be the 9 to 10 million dollars in new tax revenue from the
legalization of marijuana. This revenue could be used for all sorts of treatment
programs for drug abusers (whose use impairs their quality of life) that want and
need it, plus what cities and towns would save and reallocate from their police
budgets. Think about this new industry: What if cannabis cigarettes were made in
the community, as opposed to RJ Reynolds' which produces that toxic tobacco
product. And often forgotten is that the legalization of industrial hemp could be a real
prize here in terms of new products and jobs. Hemp has the potential to become a
multi-billion dollar industry in Connecticut alone. And public safety employees should
not worry about reform's threat to their economic interests: Very few in the criminal
justice system would have to lose their jobs. What I am talking about is not only a
shift in monies but a reassignment of personnel.

The War On Drugs is America's longest conflict, and those who are primarily affected
by it need to be compensated for an ill-advised, mindless, megalomaniacal, policy.
After all, there was the Marshall plan after WWII.

There will be a economic report in the coming year that will highlight the money
spent by cities to fight this unwinnable war on drugs in Connecticut. This report will
blow you away.



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Clifford Thornton

Clifford Thornton - Efficacy Board of Directors
Efficacy
PO Box 1234
860 657 8438
Hartford, CT 06143

www.Efficacy-online.org

Working to end race and class drug war injustice, Efficacy is a non profit
501 (c) 3 organization founded in 1997. Your gifts and donations are tax
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