Marijuana Prohibition: Criminals Making the Profits - Admission/Application Essay Example

Marijuana Prohibition: Criminals Making the Profits Rather than providing the United States and other countries with the elimination of undesirable drugs as was anticipated, the war on drugs has instead served to heighten violence, contribute to the development of organized crime, fill the prison system past capacity, consume large amounts of capital and has still had very little effect on the availability of these drugs or the numbers of individuals who use them. It has been suggested, and in some cases demonstrated, that legalizing or at least decriminalizing less harmful drugs, such as marijuana, can help to reduce the violence, significantly decrease the numbers of people incarcerated for drug use, allow more individuals to remain a contributing member of society and free up funds and manpower to combat against more harmful substances. An examination into the available literature illustrates that the war on drugs has not managed to eliminate the sales of these substances within defined boundaries, has contributed to the development of organized crime and other associated crimes and carries an unsupportable price tag in terms of prison space and law enforcement capabilities. The government’s fight, long and expensive, has not reduced the supply of marijuana on the streets of America. These policy makers, in an attempt to solve the drug problem have proposed legalizing marijuana as an alternate strategy to a failed policy. Decriminalization supporters theorize that if marijuana were legalized, several positive things would probably follow. Marijuana prices would fall enabling users to obtain their drugs at low, government-regulated prices. If prices were lower, users would not need to steal or to consort with true violent criminals in order to support their habits. “Levels of drug-related crime, and particularly violent crime, would significantly decline, resulting in less crowded courts, jails, and prisons thus allowing law-enforcement personnel to focus their energies on the violent criminals in society and the drug production, distribution, and sale would no longer be controlled by organized crime” (Inciardi & Saum, 1996). Concurring with this idea regarding the price of drugs, Kirby Cundiff (1994) said: “At the turn of the century, both heroin and aspirin were legally available and sold for approximately the same amount. Today aspirin can be purchased at the corner drug store for 20 cents per gram; heroin costs $50 per gram.” Due to the imprisonment risks now involved in its sale, the price of heroin rose drastically after it was deemed illegal. Before its criminalization, users could easily afford the drug and did not have to resort to theft. The same argument can be used for marijuana. Taxpayers, through high crime rates caused by the war on drugs and high tax rates used to support the war on drugs, continue to fund this fruitless endeavor. Drug dealers, who are willing to kill each other for profits obtained from such a lucrative market and junkies, who cannot envision a life without the drug and are willing to rob and kill for money to support their habit, would not feel compelled to resort to these measures if drugs were legal and cheap. “During prohibition liquor store owners murdered each other to protect their turf just as drug dealers do today. Today, liquor store owners are generally peaceful. Eliminating the enormous profits involved in black-market businesses eliminates the motive for violent crime, and therefore the violent crime itself” (Cundiff, 1994). “According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 1990 the United States spent $74.249 billion on justice system expenditures” (Maguire & Pastore, 1994). This figure includes federal, state, local, county and municipal expenditures. (1990 is the latest year for which data was available for the publication of the source book.) The major category of costs was police protection at $31.805 billion (42.8%) and corrections at $24.961 billion (33.6%). Between 1971 and 1990, the justice system expenditures have increased 606.0%. For the period 1979-1990, the figure is 185.3% and for the period 1985-1990, the figure is 62.8%. In the time frame since 1979, the percentage increase has been greatest for corrections. The expenditure for this activity increased 313.3% in the period 1979-1990 and increased 91.5% in the period 1985-1990 (BJS, 1992, p. 1). The war on drugs is policy based on morals, not on public health, and is taking a grave toll on the economics and civil liberties of our society. “The U.S. government is spending an enormous amount of money to wage this war – a figure that has exploded in the last two decades. In 1981, the federal drug control budget stood at $1.5 billion. By 1991, it was $11 billion. Today, it is $17 billion” (Sane, 1999). Crime is on the rise overcrowding the prison system while inner cities are becoming unlivable decreasing chances for the economic revival in those areas, all as a consequence of a misguided war on drugs to prevent the misuse of marijuana. These governmental drug programs have had very little if any reduction in the use of drugs but a great many innocent victims have had their lives ruined. “The harm which is being done by these programs is far greater than any conceivable good” (Friedman, 1991). “Most users of illegal drugs are not addicts, are employed, do not commit property crimes, and indeed are more likely to have crimes committed against them. Criminals gravitate toward the profits of dealing in drugs more often than drug use itself causes crime” (Rasmussen & Benson, 1994). Law enforcement has proved not to be an effective deterrence in marijuana use and have made the ‘drug war’ less effective. The evidence shows that stricter enforcement laws have led to the use of even more potent and more dangerous drugs. Higher drug arrest rates have caused prison overcrowding and early releases of violent prisoners putting them back on the street which causes more problems and amplifies costs for the public both in personal terms and in judicial expenses. Drug dealers have resorted to juvenile street dealers, who face less severe sentences. “The escalation of enforcement increases property crime, violent crime, and corruption and does not reduce drug abuse and may increase it” (Rasmussen & Benson, 1994). There are only so many policemen on the street and as the police focus on drugs escalates, the protection of property and crimes involving bodily harm is thinned. When police raid an area known for drug traffic, the dealers disperse into new neighborhoods spreading violent crime outside the inner city. Stronger enforcement leads to higher drug prices which, in turn, instigate the cyclical effect of more dealers, more enforcement and less protection for the public. Police corruption, or at least the perception of it, has been suspect since this law was enacted. Police departments that are low in funds can simply plant drugs in a person’s car then seize the car to be sold for profit. The dealers and law enforcement make a profit at the expense of not only civil liberties but in higher taxation for more police and prison related expenses. “The introduction of crack cocaine was a result, not the cause, of the augmented drug war. Public opinion did not generate it. Only two percent of people polled said that drugs were the most important problem in 1985, but 38 percent called it their most important concern in 1989, just as the drug war was being moved to the political back burner. Simply put, the police and judicial bureaucracies benefit from the drug war while dispensing justificatory propaganda and performing inefficiently at the public’s expense” (Rasmussen & Benson, 1994). The prohibition approach taken by the United States have led to an astronomical increase in the rates of crime and numbers of incarcerated individuals as a result while having little to no impact upon the actual availability and usage rates within the country’s borders. The statistics regarding the numbers of individuals currently using marijuana at least as a recreational activity remain stable even as marijuana busts and numbers of people incarcerated for marijuana possession continue to rise, indicating greater quantities of it being smuggled into the country and greater degrees of organization within the crime syndicates that accomplish this. Rather than dissolving the demand for these substances, the attempted block on supplies not only fails to adequately block trafficking, but it leads to greater degrees of violence and corruption by ensuring this industry remains in the hands of criminals. By legalizing and taxing marijuana, the government would profit rather than criminals. In addition, those who possess or sell marijuana would not become criminals with the burden of a criminal record simply for selling or possessing a plant that grows wild. Works Cited “A Sane Drug Policy.” The Progressive. V. 63, I. 10, p. 8. (October, 1999). July 19, 2009 Bureau of Justice Statistics. “Justice Expenditure and Employment, 1990.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice. (1992). July 19, 2009 Boyum, David & Kleiman, Mark. “Breaking the Drug-Crime Link.” Public Interest. p. 19. (Summer 2003). July 19, 2009 Cundiff, Kirby. “Crime and the Drug War.” Claustropobia. (August, 1994). July 19, 2009 < http://w3.ag.uiuc.edu:8001/Liberty/Tales/CrimeAndDrugWar.Html> Friedman, Milton. “Economic Freedom, Human Freedom, Political Freedom.” CalState East Bay College of Business and Economics (November 1, 1991). July 19, 2009 Inciardi, James & Saum, Christine. “Legalization Madness.” Public Interest. N. 123, p. 72+. (Spring 1996). July 19, 2009 Maguire, Kathleen & Pastore, Ann (Eds.). Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 1993. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, USGPO. (1994). Rasmussen, David & Benson, Bruce. “The Economic Anatomy of a Drug War: Criminal Justice in the Commons.” The Independent Review. V. 1, N. 2. (Fall, 1994). July 19, 2009 Read More