i think they shouldn’t legalize drugs because it would create a bigger problem and they would be more crimes.”
derr ok.. What you think and the proven facts by economists all over the country are 2 different things. This country could use the Legalization of marijuana to pay for a federal funded healthcare system.. This country (the US) Is stuck in the past and we as a people need to start moving forward. This isnt the 1930′s, or even the 70′s-80′s. This is 2011 and its time for us to make a move forward and the legalization and tax would have a huge income and actually generate jobs for the american people. We really need to stop being stuck in the past and its only going to happen when WE as citizens start to speak up for ourselves. its a sad day in the Us and the recession is ruining peoples lives and it will only get worse unless we think outside of the box, because lets be real, the old way is no longer working!!!…

Of course, this assumes that the government wouldn’t regulate/tax drug distribution and production – a highly unrealistic assumption.

“Daniel points out that if there’s less stuff for the police -and I presume he would include judges, lawyers, and juries- to do, then there will be less jobs, which will increase unemployment, which is a bad thing during a recession.”

If we assume regulation and taxation of drug distribution and production, it is unclear to me that net employment would drop.

Although significantly reducing the burden of drug prohibition will never happen, since anybody who supports such reduction gets an almost instant ticket out of office, I’m just astonished that the principle of the broken window fallacy is so hard for otherwise intelligent adults to grasp.

If we didn’t pay the police officers to put these people in jail… we’d spend the money on stuff we actually need to build our business, homes, etc. It’s not like former cops are bereft of marketable skills. Isn’t that obvious?