Better ways to cut 'pot' use

Quad-City Times

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Monthly pot busts on Interstate 80 aren't putting a dent in marijuana traffic. How could they? A half-century of active federal, state and local law enforcement hasn't done a whit to reduce marijuana consumption or trafficking.

Officers work hard every week attempting to discern marijuana carriers from the thousands and thousands interstate motorists. Police sources concede this year-round effort removes just a tiny, tiny fraction of marijuana on the market.

And to what end?

The National Institute on Drug Abuse surveyed 46,000 high school seniors last year to ask what they'd smoked in the past 30 days. More responded “marijuana” than “tobacco” cigarettes.

So, all of those arrests and seizures are having virtually no effect on usage.

Meanwhile, cigarette smoking is declining due to a combination of health awareness, regulation and heavy taxation.

If Americans want marijuana use to decline, experience suggests that regulation and taxation may work better than criminal narcotic enforcement.

But if Americans want to keep throwing young people in jail while marijuana shipments continue unabated, then stick with the status quo.

A guy very familiar with the status quo - Iowa 7th District Senior Associate Judge Douglas McDonald of Bettendorf - told Times columnist Barb Ickes what it's like to be asked again and again to jail or fine people for marijuana offenses.

“I don't see marijuana itself hurting people. Cocaine does that. Methamphetamine does that. In my opinion and my experience, marijuana is not like that.

“Unless you work with it like I do, you wouldn't know that.”

Despite the distinct difference in the dangers of those drugs, enforcement remains exactly the same for meth and cocaine as it does for pot.

McDonald believes that taxpayer dollars spent on pot enforcement are largely wasted.

Under the status quo, the police who found the 67 pounds of pot being transported through Henry County on Feb. 27, 2008, spent thousands to sting the would-be buyers of the load, establishing an undercover operation that resulted in four arrests and convictions. Two Pittsburgh, Pa., brothers are each serving 20-year prison terms. Thousands in prosecution costs; more than $1 million for two decades of incarceration for two individuals. And, again, no discernible impact on pot usage or supply lines.

If that marijuana had been taxed and regulated like alcohol or cigarettes, there would have been no undercover sting operation. Instead, taxpayers might have netted $5,928 on that 67-pound load if it were taxed at 19.75 cents per gram, the current effective rate of state and federal tax on cigarettes in Illinois. (The Iowa and federal combined effective cigarette tax rate is 11.85 cents per gram).

In 2006, the 12 tons of marijuana seizures reported in Henry County alone would have netted taxpayers $2,123,520 if taxed as cigarettes, and eliminated hundreds of thousands more in judicial and law enforcement costs.

In 2007, the Henry County seizures reported by state police would have generated $1,504,160 for taxpayers.

Remember, those figures represent taxation only of marijuana seized in Henry County, which authorities agree is a tiny fraction of the trade. And those figures are based on the cigarette tax rate. A marijuana tax rate, like alcohol, could be higher. Much higher.

Marijuana abusers - like alcohol abusers - caught stumbling incoherently in public or behind the wheel could still be prosecuted, fined and even jailed when necessary. Like alcohol, enforcement would focus on abuse, not use.

Responsible marijuana consumers - like responsible alcohol consumers - would become heavy taxpayers, not destitute criminals.

More importantly, that tax revenue windfall would be much more effective to reduce marijuana abuse than the monthly interstate interdiction and exhaustive undercover operations.

Statistically, it simply couldn't be less effective.

We know what happens to pot supplies when police cherry-pick highway pot transports, undercover officers conduct elaborate stings and judges like McDonald keep throwing pot users and dealers in jail.

Nothing.