Marijuana Enforcement in California: A Costly and Wasteful War
by D. Gieringer, CANORML
Costs of Prohibition:
- Marijuana accounts for 15,000 felony arrests per year, at a cost to the state of about $100
million. Over half of arrestees are black and minorities.
- CAMP helicopters disrupt the peace of our wilderness, invading personal privacy and
promoting the spread of cultivation to public lands.
- State eradication programs destroy an estimated $300 million in marijuana per year --
revenue that is lost to the local economy and diverted to foreign suppliers.
- Californians consume about $3 - 6 billion worth of marijuana per year, representing some
$250 - 500 million in lost sales taxes alone.
- The war on marijuana has deprived us of an economically valuable crop, cannabis hemp, a
productive source of fiber, biomass, protein and oil.
- The war on marijuana has cruelly deprived medical patients of valuable therapy for nausea
from chemotherapy, AIDS, glaucoma, chronic pain and spasticity, migraines, depression and other
diseases.
The war on marijuana has not controlled drug abuse. On the contrary, the record shows clearly
that the crackdown on
marijuana fueled the state's disastrous cocaine epidemic. Recent studies have found that marijuana
tends to substitute for alcohol
and harder drugs, and that states with tough marijuana laws tend to have worse accident and drug
abuse problems.
California's marijuana decrim law has been a success: The Moscone Act reduced the penalty for
possession of less than one
ounce of marijuana from a felony to a minor misdemeanor in 1976. Since its passage, the state
has saved $90 million per year in
arrest and court costs, while consumption declined to its lowest level since 1967, when use was
still a felony.
Official studies have consistently called for further decriminalization, including the National
Academy of Sciences
(1982), the Presidential Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse (1973), and the state
Research Advisory Panel (1990), which
recommended legalizing personal use and cultivation of marijuana.
Marijuana legalization works. In the Netherlands, where cannabis
is legally available in coffee shops, only 5% of the population
are regular users, while opiate and hard drug addiction is lower
than in neighboring countries. Other foreign countries,
including Germany, Australia, Italy, Switzerland and France, are
seriously considering the Dutch system.
-- D. Gieringer, Coordinator, California NORML, July 1993.
National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, NORML
2215-R Market Street #278
San Francisco CA 94114
tel: 415-563-5858
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