Reefer Sanity: Seven Great Myths About Marijuana by Sabet Kevin

Author:Sabet, Kevin [Sabet, Kevin]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Beaufort Books
Published: 2013-08-26T16:00:00+00:00

MYTH 4

THE LEGALITY OF ALCOHOL AND TOBACCO STRENGTHEN THE CASE FOR LEGAL MARIJUANA

“What’s the big deal?” is the attitude of a lot of people toward marijuana today. “Alcohol and tobacco are worse for you, and they are legal,” goes the reasoning, “so pot should be legal too. We should be consistent, right?” In fact, as I argue here, our experience with alcohol and tobacco provide a clear warning against legalization.

Alcohol kills one-hundred-thousand people annually. Tobacco kills another five hundred thousand people every year. Our two legal drugs are the biggest contributors to healthcare costs in this country. In many respects, because of its prevalence, alcohol is far worse than any of our currently illegal drugs, including crack. For example, alcohol causes much more violence and murder in our society than any other drug.

So I have little faith that we would handle legal marijuana—or any other legalized drug for that matter—much better. Indeed, modeling marijuana on alcohol and tobacco policy is a risky proposition for many reasons.

As I’ve argued earlier, one can be against marijuana legalization while wholeheartedly agreeing that our current policies can be greatly improved. We can do a whole lot better (and I talk more about this in the afterword). But legalization won’t solve most of our problems and will, in fact, create a host of new and more intractable ones. Alcohol and tobacco—our two legal drugs—are prime examples of substances burdening society with both obvious and subtle consequences. The costs of these drugs to society greatly overshadow any gains derived from their taxation.

To begin, the total social costs associated with our legal drugs—roughly $200 billion per substance—far outweigh any tax revenue we collect from their use. In fact, these costs—from healthcare expenditures due to alcohol and tobacco use, to lost productivity, to accidents—are ten times greater than any tax revenue federal and state governments receive from the taxation of these two legalized drugs.1 That’s right. For every dollar in tax revenue we get from alcohol and tobacco sales, we lose $10 in social costs.

The public health toll of our legal drugs is enormous. These drugs are pushed by big corporations with no incentive to curb use. Indeed, one only needs to peek at the commercial playbook of the tobacco industry to get a sense of what could happen under marijuana legalization.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.