Those Crazy Liberals and Their Marijuana

Last week, like many of the weeks in his tenure thus far, President Barack Obama spent many hours attempting to resolve the increasingly dire situation of the economy.

While Obama was fielding questions and meeting with economic advisors, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was visiting Mexico on a trip which focused on the country’s violent drug war.

While they might seem only unrelated, Jeff Miron, a Harvard economist, suggests in an op-ed on CNN that both problems might have the same cure-all — drug legalization:

Prohibition creates violence because it drives the drug market underground. This means buyers and sellers cannot resolve their disputes with lawsuits, arbitration or advertising, so they resort to violence instead.

Violence was common in the alcohol industry when it was banned during Prohibition, but not before or after.

Violence is the norm in illicit gambling markets but not in legal ones. Violence is routine when prostitution is banned but not when it’s permitted. Violence results from policies that create black markets, not from the characteristics of the good or activity in question.

The only way to reduce violence, therefore, is to legalize drugs. Fortuitously, legalization is the right policy for a slew of other reasons.

The commentary is especially interesting in light of  Obama’s online Q&A last week, and perhaps mostly notably his scoff at the question about bailing out 0ur economy by taxing and regulating marijuana sales.

As far as priorities go, legalization of marijuana hovers somewhere between nationalized free wireless internet and subsidized sex-change operations for federal prisoners. Which is to say I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about it and find it to be a bit of a fringe issue.

So I wasn’t surprised by Obama laughing off the pot question — nor did I blame him — but I was a little disappointed.  Even for someone not gung-ho on drug legalization and regulation, the arguments seem to be pretty compelling.  Sure, it’s antithetical to American puritan morals, but we’re in rather desperate times.  Figuring out a way to tax pot sales certainly seems to be in keeping with American ingenuity.

Which was why I was happy to hear that while Obama might not be willing to take a public stance on the debate over drug legalization, others in his administration are taking small progressive steps. Earlier this month, Attorney General Eric Holder announced he would not be prosecuting medical marijuana facilities that are allowed under state law.

But that seems a small comfort to longtime proponents of drug legalization. Bill Maher discussed the question and Obama’s response on his HBO show the next night with Mos Def, Salman Rushdie and Chistopher Hitchens. In short, it was four smart people, with some pretty smart things to say.

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As smart as Miron’s commentary and Maher’s debate are, they seem to be representative of where discussion of this topic is relegated: academia and premium cable stations.

There’s no way around it, such progressive policy is a political third rail for a new Democratic president.