Marijuana Reconsidered
I question the current regime
In a previous post, I casually suggested that libertarians are inappropriately pleased with themselves over their role in promoting legalization of marijuana. I would say that we abandoned a regime in which the state signaled society’s disapproval of marijuana, but possession of marijuana by itself rarely resulted in prison. What we have now is a regime in which marijuana is widely regarded as harmless or even beneficial. At the margin, we have not reduced excessive incarceration by much, and we have increased the use and abuse of a dangerous drug by a noticeable amount.
For the WSJ, Susan Pinker writes,
Several studies have shown that chronic cannabis use is linked to a higher incidence of schizophrenia among men in their early 20s, the age when the disease is usually diagnosed. The first paper on the topic, a Swedish study published in 1997, found that heavy cannabis use was associated with a sixfold increase in schizophrenia risk. In the decades since, social scientists have unearthed a strong link between heavy cannabis use and other severe psychological illnesses, including clinical depression and bipolar disorder.
These are observational studies, not controlled experiments. But the link between cigarette smoking and cancer was established using observational studies, following Bradford Hill’s criteria. I think that the link between marijuana and mental illness fits pretty well with those criteria.
I believe that we ought to have a strong presumption that, as with cigarettes, marijuana users are causing harm to themselves. Because the harm can include severe mental illness, it also causes harm to others.
The FDA should rigorously test the claims of the medicinal benefit of marijuana. Does it really provide more benefit at less risk than alternatives? If not, then false claims of medicinal benefit ought to be penalized.
I think it is fair to assess a fine on people who use marijuana in public. Penalties for driving under the influence of marijuana are appropriate to enforce.
With liquor, we regulate alcohol content and enforce laws against unregulated manufacture and distribution. We have laws against underage drinking. We should be at least as strict with marijuana.
From a libertarian perspective, over the past two decades we have seen support for economic freedom decline. We have seen freedom of speech fall into disrepute. Marijuana legalization is a libertarian “cause” that seems to be moving forward. Pardon me if I fail to jump for joy.
A conservative would argue that public safety and order are important and fragile social goods. To protect one's society, you need to deal with the fact that a minority of the population has poor impulse control and usually low IQ (low impulse control can frequently lower one's IQ) which leads this group to engage in a variety of anti-social behaviors. The only reliable way society has found to manage this situation is to have laws and mores that are simple to understand, easy to enforce, and apply to everyone equally -- even though high IQ people with good impulse control would be perfectly fine with the freedoms these rules seek to curtail.
Why do we think it is that most "addictive" industries (cigarettes, marijuana, gambling, alcohol) make most of their profit from the addicts?
I am not a conservative but I acknowledge there's more than a kernel of truth there. How does society tolerate freedom for all, while dealing with the negative externalities of a sub-population making consistently poor choices? This is very much a fear of others freedom I suppose.
I wish for a middle ground. I want decriminalization and I don't want a drug war but I want vices heavily taxed to disincentivize use, anti-social behaviors that arise from these choices to be swiftly punished with fines and jail time, and advertising from these industries strictly regulated.
But that seems too hard for our society to pull off. It looks like either you get prohibition or full permissiveness. Doesn't seem like our society has an option called "balance the tradeoffs here".
Not sure what to do about any of that.
I would not count legalization a failure so quickly or so easily.
There's a lot of disgust reaction visible in your description from your visit to NY, but if you leave the novelty of this particular behavior aside, and wonder what those people would otherwise be doing, I suspect that on balance, the primary alternatives for the marginal hour of marijuana escapism are likely to be some combination of alcohol, passive entertainment, and various extractive gamble/gaming type activities.
It would be better if we could strike a balance between the illegal regime and the "legal, therefore inherently good" regime, but that balance will take time to evolve. Right now there is still a very strong gap between federal and state law, which means that the sellers are highly resistant to regulation, since they still have to operate on the margins in many ways.
More to the point though, I think "regime in which the state signaled society’s disapproval of marijuana, but possession of marijuana by itself rarely resulted in prison" is a perfect example of something libertarians should be proud of overthrowing. Things for which criminal penalties are possible, but effectively discretionary at several levels come with a huge hidden cost, because much of the enforcement is off books, and takes the form of the state and it's agents exploiting people who either would have simply been charged (if enforcement was common) or not charged (if possession/use was legal). That extralegal opportunity for blackmail was a large, mostly unseen deadweight cost, and a huge stain on the credibility of the legal system, and there will be long term benefits to unwinding it, but that may take a generation or more to show up. Certainly, my generation will take a long time to unwind my generation's shared assumption that a police officer is someone you cannot trust and don't want around.