Tuesday, March 03, 2009

Legalize pot and tax the crap out of it

Today's Overcompensating makes a timely proposal. Just as the repeal of Prohibition during the Great Depression helped economic recovery and reduced associated criminal activity, repealing the drug war could do the same. Legalizing prostitution along the lines of the New Zealand model (adopted in 2003, and in 2008 in Western Australia) is also a good idea.

Now that Attorney General Eric Holder has confirmed Obama's campaign promise that the feds will not engage in drug raids against medical marijuana operations in states that have legalized such activity, the time is right.

6 comments:

Ktisophilos said...

Do you support Milton Friedman's case against legalizing drugs, made as long ago as 1972?

Lippard said...

I think you mean his case against prohibition--he favored legalization. Yes, I think he makes good arguments.

Ktisophilos said...

Oops, of course, you're right.

Friedman also made a good case that the FDA stands for "Frustrating Drug Advancement", because this bureaucracy holds up life-saving drugs. This is because the bureaucrats will be pilloried if a someone dies from a drug they approve, but they are far less likely to get into trouble if even thousands die because they didn't receive a drug they held back, since it's far harder to prove a negative.

Thus he argued that the only solution is abolition of the FDA, since replacing the personnel would as useless as demanding Barking Cats as long as the incentives were unchanged.

epe said...

Did you see the Glenn Beck interview with Rob Kampia of the Marijuana Policy Project? (Transcript here: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,500965,00.html ). All sorts of stupid. Check out the video; you get to see all of Beck's juvenile facial expressions.

Einzige said...

Glenn Beck describes himself as a "libertarian", huh?

He's a libertarian like Britney Spears is an intellectual.

Ktisophilos said...

Go one step further: make drug trade a government monopoly—then it would be as dead as Amtrak and the US Postal service ;)