Abstract
With a large number of marijuana users based in the United States of America, criminalization has been significantly costly for the federal government, medical service providers and the criminal justice system. Over the years, many patients have experienced the advantages of using medical marijuana and doctors have been prescribing marijuana in cases they find necessary. On the economic point of view, prohibition of marijuana costs the federal government billions of dollars in expenses to regulate and the government misses out on the tax revenue, significantly powerful industry for job creation and supporting other industries and alleviates the price for regular users. The criminal justice system suffers the most with the criminalization as a significant portion of their budget is allocated to arresting and correctional expenses of marijuana users. With the legalization of marijuana, it is possible that the medical, economic and criminal justice system of the country can be liberated and users can openly use the herb rather than get involved in an illegal trade that costs the government billions of dollars annually.
Keywords: marijuana, incarceration, tax.
Thesis: Research shows that federal legalization of cannabis would benefit society as a whole because it has proven medical value, would increase tax revenues and decrease expenditures, and ease the burden on our overloaded justice system, allowing more time to focus on fighting more severe/violent crimes.
Economic Benefits/Impact of Legalization
For the four decade period (1970-2010), the government of the United States of America has spent around US$ 2.5 trillion for prohibiting drug control. This expenditure also includes a prohibition on illegal trade of marijuana under the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937. Legalizing marijuana will certainly reduce U.S. government’s expenditure utilized in taking prohibitive actions against illegal use of marijuana for recreational purposes. In addition, a report from Cato Institute in 2010 identified that government can save around US$ 8.7 billion from marijuana legalization. This revenue is supposed to be earned from taxes collected in the trade of legal cannabis taxed on the same scale of tobacco and alcohol (Miron & Waldock, 2010). With revenue of US$ 8.7 billion to be made in 2010, which is supposed to increase annually the federal government is missing out on a major source of tax revenue.
This further proven by a paper taken out by 300 economists in 2012, which proved that the federal government can save around US$ 13.7 billion annually by legalizing marijuana (Huffington Post, 2012). Such an increase within two years shows the increasing demand for marijuana in the country for recreational and medicinal purposes. The federal government, avoiding such a fast growing and taxable industry would only be an economic mistake. The state of Colorado which was one of the first states in the country to legalize marijuana under Amendment 64, estimated that they would earn around $60 million in savings and additional revenue from taxes. Another economic advantage of legalizing marijuana is a reduction in the market prices of marijuana. It is expected that the prices of marijuana could drop by an estimated 100 times, which will help the marijuana buyers to invest their money in other products and facilities.
A 2007 report in Forbes revealed that prohibition of marijuana cost around US$ 41.8 million annually to the federal government. This seems like an extreme overhead for the government, which was going through an economic recession at the same time. Spending billions on prohibiting marijuana could have been used in several other ways to help sustain the American economy (Hardy, 2007). In 2009, another report in the TIME magazine revealed that the total value of the marijuana crop only in the California state was around US$ 14 billion (Stateman, 2009). This is such a huge source of revenue for the California government that could have easily helped the economically suffering government from generating revenue. Only the tax bill on the US$ 14 billion crop would be around $1.3 billion annually. Therefore, it makes sense to legalize marijuana in the state and ensure they earn revenue from taxing the herb rather than spend billions on prohibiting the use.
In 2010, the illegal marijuana industry was worth an estimated US$ 36 billion in the United States. Therefore, the government needed to spend billions to prohibit the illegal trade of marijuana in the country. This all happened when the country was recovering from one of the worst economic recessions in the history and could have implemented the same expenses in finding economic reparation. It would have been much better for the government to legalize marijuana and tax the trade through dispensaries, which would generate billions of dollars annually (Cain, 2010). In addition, the dispensary ads would have helped in boosting revenue of the nationwide newspapers and created jobs not only in the marijuana trade industry, but also in support industries such as medical dispensaries, newspapers and other forms of media (Phan, 2011).
Another essential economic impact of marijuana legalization is the number of jobs it can create. It is expected that every weGrow Center in the country can create around 75 jobs, which can certainly impact the unemployment rates throughout the country. With the hydroponic marijuana supply chain active, around 75 unemployed individuals can be hired indirectly and help the federal government to reduce the unemployment rate without spending billions on helping traditional industries (Bradford, 2012). Overall, according to Bloomberg estimates, the overall size of the legalized marijuana industry can be over US$ 100 billion in the United States (Easton, 2009). Legalizing marijuana would not only provide economic advantages such as eliminating prohibition expenses, adding tax revenues, adding jobs and revenue for alternative and support industries, reduce the retail price of marijuana among many others; but it would also build ground for another major industry with readymade demand in the market.
Benefits/impact on the Justice System
The United States of America has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, which is due to the presence of federal prohibitive policies such as illegal trade of marijuana. It is fascinating to identify that inmates incarcerated for charges related to marijuana are costing around $1 billion in 2007 (Bradford, 2012). This is such a huge expense on incarcerating people on consumption and trade of marijuana, when there are many other crime activities that need further investigation and criminals living freely in the country. In addition, as per FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), around half of the arrests related to drugs in 2013 in the country were related to possession of marijuana or manufacturing/sale of cannabis. With half of the drug incarcerated convicts coming from the illegal trade of marijuana, it is justifiable that legalization will certainly lessen the burden on the justice system in the country.
In 2010, around 55,000 individuals in the state of New York were incarcerated for possession of marijuana, which turns out to be a fifth degree offence in the state (Sacco & Finklea, 2014). This means around 55,000 people were convicted for possession of marijuana and the state was burdened with the cost of their misdemeanor and incarceration. Legalizing marijuana would certainly help in reducing the number of people in federal jails and help the criminal justice system to focus on other important cases. Another important thing to note is that the total number of arrests related to possession and use of marijuana is significantly smaller when compared with the estimated number of users. By the conservative estimates of the government, around 12 million Americans are regularly using marijuana and only 2-3 percent gets arrested annually. This leaves an open question for the criminal justice system and whether they can even afford to incarcerate 12 million people all over the country. The answer is obviously no as it would bankrupt the justice system and the federal government cannot afford to have a defunct criminal justice system (McVay, 1991).
The criminal justice system that ranges from police arrests to corrections department needs to allocate a significant amount in their budget towards arrests, prosecution, sentencing and incarceration of the marijuana dealers, users, and other parties involved in the infrastructure such as manufacturers of drug paraphernalia, transporters, etc.). If marijuana use is decriminalized, the criminal justice system would witness a reduction in processing and enforcement tasks that are associated with the criminalizing marijuana use. A direct relationship exists between the numbers of cases processed or arrests made for crimes related to marijuana by the justice system and the proportion of the budget expended by these agencies. By eliminating and reducing these events related to marijuana arrests, the agency expenses can be reduced proportionately and spent in incriminating other serious crimes (Austin, 2016).
In 2012, within the state of New York around 39,218 arrests were made for the criminal possession of marijuana this number meant that around 440,000 people have been arrested only in New York State for marijuana possession since 2002. The problem with this number is the number of police hours (1 million) that have been utilized in making these arrests (Levine, Siegel & Sayegh, 2013). This is a huge number and could have been utilized in controlling other crime rings and cartels based in a major city such as New York. Overall, legalizing marijuana throughout the country would help the justice system to reduce the number of police hours spend on making arrests and incarcerating people, eliminate the need for criminal rings and drug cartels that supply illegal marijuana and possibly reduce violent crimes that are caused in the illegal trade of marijuana.
Another aspect of the society that can be impacted through legalization of marijuana is practice of racial disparity in the criminal justice system. It is reported that blacks and whites, roughly consume marijuana at the same rate; but blacks are arrested 3.7 times more than whites for possession. The issue is serious is states such as Iowa, where the rate is around 8.3 times and in few of well-known racist counties this rate reaches up to 30 times. Therefore, a problem caused by the criminalization of marijuana is the scapegoating of the black marijuana users. Another aspect of marijuana criminalization is only a small percentage of arrests get felony conviction, the rest are parried off as misdemeanors in the form of probation or fines. The impact of every arrest made on the future of the individual is grave as marijuana convictions often have consequences on individual’s education, employment, family life and immigration status (Wegman, 2014).
Conclusion
Legalization of marijuana has been in identified as a possible solution to several problems of the American economy, medical treatment procedures and effectiveness of the criminal justice system. Marijuana has been used as a medicinal product for several centuries and has been part of the American medical system in the past. There are many states and doctors who have utilized marijuana as a means to calm the pain and anguish of their patients and identify the advantages of using marijuana in treatment. Similarly, legalizing marijuana also has economic implications of the American economy as it will surely help in generating tax revenue and jobs, reduce prohibition expenses, fund support industries and reduce the retail price of marijuana. All these economic advantages are attractive enough for the federal government to consider legalizing marijuana. Finally, legalization of marijuana will also help in improving the effectiveness of the criminal justice system as it will reduce the number of hours and budget spent on arresting and incriminating marijuana users, manufacturers and suppliers. In addition, other issues which creep up with marijuana arrests such as racial disparities, permanent black mark on the individual’s record and will help the justice system to focus on other important issues and crimes in the society. To conclude, legalization of marijuana would turn out to be a beneficial outcome in the medical sphere, economic quarters and criminal justice system of the United States of America.
References
Austin., J. (2016). The Decrim. Movement. Retrieved 27 January 2016 from, http://norml.org/component/zoo/category/rethinking-the-consequences-of-decriminalizing-marijuana
Bradford., H. (7 November 2012). 14 Ways Marijuana Legalization Could Boost The Economy. Retrieved 27 January 2016 from, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/marijuana-economy-14-reasons_n_2089107.html?section=india
Cain,. A. (28 December 2010). Capitalizing on the Billion Dollar Marijuana Industry. Retrieved 27 January 2016 from, http://madamenoire.com/106691/capitalizing-on-the-billion-dollar-marijuana-industry/
Derrickson, J. (2014). Marijuana legalization: State initiatives, implications, and issues. New York, NY: Nova Science Publishers.
Easton., S. (2009). Legalize Marijuana for Tax Revenue. Retrieved 27 January 2016 from, http://www.businessweek.com/debateroom/archives/2010/03/legalize_mariju.html
Levine., H, Siegel., L & Sayegh., G. (March 2013). One Million Police Hours: Making 440,000 Marijuana Possession Arrests in New York City. Retrieved 27 January 2016 from, https://www.drugpolicy.org/sites/default/files/One_Million_Police_Hours.pdf
Miron, J.A. & Waldock, K. (2010). The Budgetary Impact of Ending Drug Prohibition. CATO Institute. Retrieved 27 January 2016 from, http://www.cato.org/publications/white-paper/budgetary-impact-ending-drug-prohibition
Hardy., Q. (1 October 2007). Marijuana's $42 Billion Question. Retrieved 27 January 2016 from, http://www.forbes.com/2007/09/29/marijuana-laws-work-biz-cx_qh_1001pot.html
Huffington Post. (28 August 2012). Pot Legalization Could Save U.S. $13.7 Billion Per Year, 300 Economists Say. Retrieved 27 January 2016 from, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/economists-marijuana-legalization_n_1431840.html?section=india\
McVay, D. (1991). The Drug Legalization Debate, edited by James A. Inciardi. In Marijuana Legalization: The Time Is Now. New York, NY: SAGE Publications.
Phan., S. (4 July 2011). Marijuana ads mean big money for weekly newspaper. Retrieved 27 January 2016 from, http://archive.news10.net/news/local/article/144285/2/Marijuana-ads-mean-big-money-for-weekly-newspaper
Sacco., L.N. & Finklea., K. (4 December 2014). State Marijuana Legalization Initiatives:
Implications for Federal Law Enforcement. Retrieved 27 January 2016 from, https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43164.pdf
Stateman., A. (13 March 2009). Can Marijuana Help Rescue California's Economy?. Retrieved 27 January 2016 from, http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1884956,00.html
Wegman., J. (28 July 2014). The Injustice of Marijuana Arrests. Retrieved 27 January 2016 from, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/29/opinion/high-time-the-injustice-of-marijuana-arrests.html?_r=0
