Would legalizing drugs help the USA?

Some people believe keeping drugs illegal will save people from becoming drug addicts.

Others believe that legalizing drugs will be reduce crime and positively affect governments finances.

Table of Contents

Some main reasons for legalization

According to CATO, drug legalization would result in saving federal and state governments about $40 billion a year and another gross another $45 billion a year in tax revenue. I don’t know if the numbers are exact, but they are probably in the ballpark.

In other words, drug legalization could be an annual net of $85 billion to the US government revenue.

Please note/understand that I would like to wish everyone the best and am rooting for everyone to overcome any drug-related challenges such as addiction.

Also, this article discusses drugs in general, not specifically marijuana. Marijuana has plenty of arguments for it legalization.

Some of the ideas discussed include marijuana, but really that’s a different subject.

But there might be increased costs associated with an increase in drug use.

Note: this article is incomplete at the moment.

Here’s the main ideas for legalization:

PROS

Tax revenue from drugs
Reduce incarceration levels in the non-violent drug related category
Organized crime would lose revenue and control
Reduction in crime related to drug business
Reduction in Law Enforcement Costs
Quality of drugs would go up – less medical problems for drug users associated with “bad” ingredients
Many laws related to alcohol could be used for other drugs, like drinking and driving, rehab, public intoxication, counties could be dry and not have places to buy/sell certain drugs
Historical reasons for criminalizing drugs were based on poor reasoning
Learning from the mistakes of the Prohibition Era

CONS

More people may decide to try drugs that are very bad for the body
If there are more addicts, than crime related to addiction might rise
Legalization may be bad for people with substance abuse issues
It may not reduce crime rates

Other issues

Media bias
Comparisons to other major bad habits
Possible racist histories of drug illegalization

Media bias

According to Wikipedia, even though crime rates have gone down, business organizations seeking profit in the world of reporting “news” (the media, in other words), tend to exaggerate crime rate trends for profit.

Other Bad Habits

Obesity

300,000 deaths a year attributed to obesity in the US.

Alcohol Abuse

Drinking too much can harm your health. Excessive alcohol use led to approximately 88,000 deaths and 2.5 million years of potential life lost (YPLL) each year in the United States from 2006 – 2010, shortening the lives of those who died by an average of 30 years.^1,2 Further, excessive drinking was responsible for 1 in 10 deaths among working-age adults aged 20-64 years. The economic costs of excessive alcohol consumption in 2010 were estimated at $249 billion, or $2.05 a drink.³
From CDC
Please note that US federal and state governments receive about $5 billion from the direct taxation of alcohol. This doesn’t include income tax nor corporate tax on entities involved in the industry.

Cigarettes

Cigarette smoking is responsible for more than 480,000 deaths per year in the United States, including nearly 42,000 deaths resulting from secondhand smoke exposure. This is about one in five deaths annually, or 1,300 deaths every day.¹
On average, smokers die 10 years earlier than nonsmokers.³
If smoking continues at the current rate among U.S. youth, 5.6 million of today’s Americans younger than 18 years of age are expected to die prematurely from a smoking-related illness. This represents about one in every 13 Americans aged 17 years or younger who are alive today.¹

From CDC

Pros

Tax revenue from drugs

$20-45 billion net revenue, hypothetically.

According to the White House, the USA spends about $100 billion a year to purchase illegal drugs (Here’s the link to full study, done by the RAND corporation).

The White House also notes that, “in 2007 alone, illicit drug use cost taxpayers more than $193 billion in lost productivity, healthcare, and criminal justice costs.“

So let’s figure out possible tax revenues from about $100 billion spent on drugs.

First, let’s assume that 100 billion is the street price, which includes the cost of production, transportation and all the in between. With hypothetical legalization, let’s say the same amount would cost $25 billion. Then add on $50 billion in taxes. Drugs would be 25% cheaper. It would need to be cheaper in order to discourage illegal activity.

But that would be $50 billion in taxes a year. Let’s say between $25-50 billion in taxes minus 5-10 billion for regulation and administration, which equals $20-45 billion net revenue.

On an interesting side note, at least two states have taxes on illegal drugs, Kansas and North Carolina, but probably use it more as way to prosecute drug dealers.

Reduce incarceration levels in the non-violent drug category

Potentially save at least $15-18 billion in government money a year.

Also, those people could pay taxes if they were working instead of in jail (2.25 billion). And say they got a drunk and disorderly charge (like someone might get for walking a drunk and singing loudly and out of key), but had been doing cocaine, they could pay a fine instead of jail time. Let’s say those .5 million inmates in state and federal jails just paid a $1000 fine.. That would be another $500 million in fees.

1 in every 111 adults in the US is in jail, the highest rate of incarceration in the world. Legalizing drugs would significatnly reduce the number, but not completely (538, but facts are a little incomplete). Please note that many people in jail for violent crimes and robbery.

Even though people of European heritage use and sell drugs at the same rates as other American with different ethnic backgrounds, the incarceration rates reflect a ethnic/racial bias against certain groups of people. In other words, Black and Latinos are jailed at a higher rate than similiar White perpetrators, which points to racism, though possibly subconscious.

Drug offenses account for about 46.5% of federal inmates as of December 2015.

There are about 300,000 inmates in federal prison due to drug charges and 256,000 in state prisons.

Cost per prisoner is about $30,000.

So this costs about $15 billion (500,000*30,000).

Organized crime would lose revenue and control

One of the big bonuses to drug legalization would be the weakening of criminal organizations on certain locations. This might mean less shootouts over gang turf and less incentive for people to resort to violence when selling drugs.

The war on drugs has also driven the drug trade underground, creating a violent illicit market that is responsible for far too many lost lives and broken communities. Organized crime, gangs and drug cartels have the most to gain financially from prohibition, and these profits can easily be funneled into arms smuggling, violence and corruption. The devastation wrought by Mexican cartels in particular [possibly over 100,000 lives in 10 years] has made it far too costly to continue with a failed prohibition strategy.
From Drug Policy Alliance

Reduction in Law Enforcement Costs

According, to albeit liberal sources, Law Enforcement Cost (dedicated to drug enforcement) would go down.

Quality of drugs would go up

Many laws related to alcohol could be used for other drugs, like drinking and driving, rehab, public intoxication, counties could be dry and not have places to buy/sell certain drugs

Historical reasons for criminalizing drugs were based on poor reasoning

In terms of money saved, $43 billion in enforcement costs per year (source at ibtimes.com) and $46 billion in tax revenue.