September 23, 2004

Entry Two

In an earlier post, "Why Marijuana Should Be Illegal," I argued that marijuana should be illegal even if it is a neutral activity, like watching bad TV shows, because neutral activities displace good activities. In that post, I explicitly put aside considerations of the cost of enforcement, noting that they could reverse the conclusion. But on reflection, I think I was wrong to say that. If we have decided that marijuana should be illegal, putting aside enforcement costs, then high enforcement costs would not reverse the conclusion.

The reason is simple: just because we make something illegal doesn't mean we need to enforce the law. To be sure, our current marijuana laws, though by no means vigorously enforced, are costly-- we do devote police time to tracking down major growers and dealers, even though I doubt police are spending any time tracking down users (as opposed, perhaps, to arresting them if they smoke in front of a policeman who is passing by for other reasons). But we wouldn't have to. We could limit ourselves to going after marijuana fields that the policeman happens to see while patrolling, and going only after dealers who advertise on national TV. The degree of enforcement is an important policy question-- an issue where the advocates of marijuana have largely won-- but it is separable from the legality issue. Minimal enforcement is close to costless (it could even be profitable, with fines and seizures); tight enforcement would probably be more costly than the current lax enforcement.

Posted by erasmuse at 05:01 PM | Comments (0)

Test 1

This isa ifrst etnry.

Here is som more stuff.

Posted by erasmuse at 04:59 PM | Comments (0)