California is close to legalizing pot – for economic reasons strikingly similar to those that ended Prohibition in 1933. Is this a step in the right direction, or more evidence of America’s road to ruin? You decide...

Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason, in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation and makes crimes out of things that are not crimes.
– Abraham Lincoln

Wacky Tobacky, Mary Jane, Grass, Herb, Bud, Evil Weed... whatever you call it, the Governator (a.k.a. Arnold Schwarzenegger) wants to legalize it – so he can tax the daylights out of it. He’s only tiptoeing around the question, for now, in case moral outrage blows up in his face.

Of what do I speak, you ask? Earlier this week,California’s governor addressed the hot-button “legalization” issue at a fire safety event in Davis, California.

On being reminded of the results of a recent Field Poll – one that showed 56% voter support for legalizing and taxing marijuana in the Golden State – Arnie had this to say:

Well, I think it’s not time for (legalization), but I think it’s time for a debate... I think all of those ideas of creating extra revenues, I’m always for a open debate on it. And I think we ought to study very carefully what other countries are doing that have legalized marijuana and other drugs, what effect did it have on those countries?

For better or worse, Governor Schwarzenegger has shown himself to be an extremely pragmatic guy. In your humble editor’s point of view, his statement in Davis was thinly veiled code for, “Heck yeah we should legalize it! Pot is California’s biggest cash crop – every stoner knows that – and we sure could use the extra billions right about now. But we have to do this carefully, so as not to ‘tweak’ the more upsettable folks...”

California state assemblyman Tom Ammiano has already introduced legislation regulating the “cultivation and sale” of wacky tobacky. At a projected $14 billion in sales, marijuana could dwarf the revenue-generating power of, say, vegetables ($5.7 billion) or grapes ($2.6 billion). The idea would be to make pot available to citizens in the same licensed and age-restricted manner as alcohol.

Anyone want to lay odds this thing passes in some form or another? My guess is, it’s only a matter of time before the tokers enjoy a victory blaze...

A “Highly” Polarizing Issue

Here at Taipan Daily, we now know how you feel about guns (thanks to the deluge of passionate feedback you’ve sent on to Jim). I imagine we’ll shortly know how you feel about marijuana too.

For the record, two personal points should be stated up front:

• Your humble editor has tried the stuff – part of the grand college experiment and all – but he is not a regular user (or even an infrequent user).
• He really doesn’t see what the big deal is.

For many of us who embraced classic rock in high school or college, Jimi Hendrix posed a burning set of questions: “Are you Experienced?” And, perhaps more poignantly, “Have you ever been Experienced?” (Hendrix then smugly informs his rapt listeners: “Well, I have.”)

In a quest to answer the Hendrix challenge, I tried marijuana a handful of times in my late high school and early college years. The first few times it didn’t work. The one time it really, really worked – giving me the “experience” I craved – was in a dorm room in the Czech Republic.

In terms of being stoned, baked, fried, or whatever you want to call it, that was the first – and also the last – time for me. It was kind of cool, kind of weird, kind of different... and something I felt zero desire to repeat. A “been there, done that” type of deal.

The whole reason the marijuana debate seems a bit silly, at least to yours truly, is because the pernicious effects of alcohol (a legal drug) are so much worse.

Again dialing back the clock to high school and college days, I saw far more damage done – and brain cells forever lost – by way of binge drinking than pot smoking. My upscale Atlanta high school had its share of full-blown alcoholics in the eleventh grade, if the intensity and regularity of weekend activities counted as anything to go by.

In college, meanwhile, a nationwide fraternity crackdown took place during my freshman and sophomore years. It seemed that a rash of newbie pledges were dying like flies from alcohol poisoning – not an uncommon occurrence during “hell week,” a long-standing frat tradition in which inebriated humiliation serves as a holy rite of passage.

Alcohol can be ugly. Alcohol can be violent. Alcohol can lead to crashed cars, crashed livers and deeply regrettable sexual encounters.

In contrast, the dedicated stoners of my old acquaintance seemed to suffer from little more than an excess of mellowness and profound lack of ambition. (And you don’t even have to be a stoner for that.)

That kind of sums up the head scratcher for me... though I’ve known of many lives ruined (and even lives lost) thanks to alcohol, for the life of me I can’t recall anyone who died, or otherwise seriously screwed up their lives, by way of smoking a little pot.

I’m not saying marijuana is harmless. I’m just offering up the following for consideration. Take most any argument for why marijuana is bad – gateway drug, path to oblivion, ruinous to one’s health, silent killer, not a good mix with heavy machinery, et cetera and so on – and the same logic applies to alcohol in multiples of greater force. Yet one remains illegal (and culturally frowned upon) while the other does not.

Why Prohibition Ended

If California does wind up legalizing marijuana for the purpose of taxing it, the timing would make perfect sense in terms of historical precedent.

Remember Prohibition? Obviously most of us don’t. But I imagine some of Taipan Daily’s more seasoned readers could share stories – at least relating to their parents’ and older siblings’ experiences, if not their own.

Prohibition (the banning of alcohol in various forms) has gone in and out of favor in many countries. Prohibition in the United States lasted from roughly 1920 to 1933.

The Prohibition movement had gotten underway in earnest many decades earlier. It was enough of a force in the 19th century for Abraham Lincoln to acclaim against it (as noted in the opening quote to this piece).

Painted in starkly religious terms, drunkenness and alcohol abuse were viewed by prohibitionists as the devil’s handiwork. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union, founded in 1873, was typical of the prevailing mindset at the time. Though “temperance” suggests a policy of moderation, the WCTU wanted alcohol flat-out banned. In time they got their way.

So why did Prohibition finally end in 1933?

The common belief is that America finally woke up and came to its senses, realizing that a total ban on alcohol was just a dumb idea. Plenty of folks still wanted to drink it... “Speakeasies” were in the highly profitable business of providing it... Organized Crime was making a mint off of it... and the Great Depression years were god-awful depressing enough without the comfort of an adult beverage.

The reasons were many for the nation to come to its senses. But the surprising reality is this: Prohibition did not end because the overweening moral majority changed its mind. Instead, it ended because the government needed money.

Fiscal Desperation Trumps Moral Outrage

In an eye-opening piece titled “The Politics of Prohibition,” Don Boudreax writes:

Despite pleas throughout the 1920s by journalist H.L. Mencken and a tiny handful of other sensible people to end Prohibition, Congress gave no hint that it would repeal this folly. Prohibition appeared to be here to stay -- until income-tax revenues nose-dived in the early 1930s.

From 1930 to 1931, income-tax revenues fell by 15 percent.

In 1932 they fell another 37 percent; 1932 income-tax revenues were 46 percent lower than just two years earlier. And by 1933 they were fully 60 percent lower than in 1930.

With no end of the Depression in sight, Washington got anxious for a substitute source of revenue.

That source was liquor sales.

It was an ironic thing. While the movement to ban alcohol had been gaining momentum for decades – from the mid-18th century onward – Congress had always kept alcohol legal because of the vital tax revenues provided by doing so.

But then, in 1913, something momentous happened. In addition to the creation of the Federal Reserve, a national income tax was introduced. (What a crappy year!)

By 1920, the government had reaped such a large windfall by way of the new national income tax that the stream of revenue from alcohol sales was deemed expendable.

And so the prohibitionists (who maintained a measure of political clout) got their way, and alcohol consumption was banned... until some 13 years later, when fiscal desperation (a need for more revenues in the teeth of the Great Depression) finally trumped moral outrage.

Now we are seeing the same pattern play out with marijuana. If it were purely a moral question, the arm-crossed naysayers likely would not be budged. But throw a desperate need for cash into the mix, and the situation suddenly becomes fluid.

After all, the great state of California now faces a fiscal crunch arguably as dire as anything the U.S. government had to deal with in the 1930s. A few months back The Wall Street Journal wrote:

After more than 150 years of being a destination, California is becoming a place entrepreneurs, investment capital and the hardy workers who made it a global leader in agriculture, technological innovation and scientific research are fleeing. This exodus is the marker of something deeper than a national recession. It's a sign that the attempts by state leaders to spend their way back to prosperity are killing California.

While it has the sixth highest tax burden in the nation, according to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, California is facing a breathtaking $40 billion budget deficit this year. This comes on the heels of a decade-long spending spree. Last year the state budget was $131 billion, up from $56 billion in 1998.

Things have not gotten much better from the time that WSJ piece was published. The Golden State has been “on the brink” for months, and by most accounts is holding on to solvency by its fingernails.

No wonder more than half of registered California voters want to legalize – and tax – the evil weed.

A Nation of Law Breakers?

Fiscal realities aside, it seems generally unwise to promote laws that would see tens of millions of people in jail.

According to a survey published by the Public Library of Science, a whopping 42% of Americans have smoked marijuana at least once. (Ironically, the survey found Americans more than twice as likely to have tried the stuff as the Dutch... you know, those happy wooden-shoed folk who tolerate open-air drug use in the city of Amsterdam.)

Forty-two percent is a pretty big number. Anything 42% of the country is cool enough with to have tried at least once, just for kicks, seems pretty mainstream. (Are there even any television shows that command that high a percentage of viewing audience? Any books, perhaps excepting the Bible, that 42% of American adults have read?) When it comes to making “crimes out of things that are not crimes,” it’s hard to think of a more in-your-face example.

I don’t know... maybe I’m jaded by all the casual references, the way marijuana has become an easygoing part of the pop-culture landscape. (Weed has always been funny in a way that, say, heroin is not – hence the presence of weed in countless lowbrow comedy movies and HBO sitcoms.)

Or maybe I’m jaded by the fact that my old stoner friends managed to “grow up” and become hardworking professionals with families – whereas some of the amateur alcoholics I’ve known grew into more serious problems.

So what’s your opinion? To borrow a turn of phrase from Jim, how do YOU feel about the great marijuana debate? Should California follow the advice of Peter Tosh and “legalize it?” Or would this just be another milestone on America's road to ruin?

And if you feel strongly that marijuana should stay illegal... and assuming that you don’t advocate a return of prohibition for alcohol... then how come? What’s the dividing line between the two that makes responsible use of one morally acceptable, and the other not?

I’m genuinely curious on this issue... I had a hunch as to which way you (as in the collective Taipan Daily readership “you”) would lean on the gun issue, and my instincts were proven correct. The old magic 8-ball is giving more of a “reply hazy” on this topic, though. Looking forward to your thoughts: justice@taipandaily.com

Other Related Topics: Justice Litle , Safe Haven Investor

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