Legalization

Researchers say that if marijuana is legalized across the nation, there would be $8.7 billion in law enforcement savings and $8.7 billion in tax revenue. If all drugs are legalized, the savings figure becomes $46.7 billion and the revenue $41.3 billion. A budgetary benefit of $88 billion per year is not chump change, especially given the current state of the economy.

Jeffrey A. Miron, a senior lecturer and director of undergraduate studies at Harvard University and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, opines that drug legalization would not only promote specific policy objectives that are near and dear to conservative hearts, it is also consistent with core principles that conservatives endorse in other contexts.

A California ballot measure to legalize marijuana is now ahead in the polls. This has one of Utah's most prominent and outspoken politicians saying, someday, the drug will even be legal here in Utah. "To put people behind bars for possessing or smoking pot is absolutely absurd. It would make more sense to put people behind bars for smoking cigarettes," said former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson.

Quoting great minds such as Milton Friedman, Gary Becker and Mario Vargas Llosa, Spain’s former drug Czarina Araceli Manjón-Cabeza endorsed drug legalization in a compelling op-ed [in Spanish] published in El País, Spain’s leading newspaper. Just a week ago, Felipe González, Spain’s former Prime Minister, also came out in support of drug legalization.