Even if we take into account that the person who did the report is for marijuana legalization, his conclusion that pot is now the nation's biggest cash crop is probably true, and I notice that the government official quoted doesn't dispute it. What is challenged by the government is this:
A 2005 analysis by Harvard visiting professor Jeffrey Miron estimates that if the United States legalized marijuana, the country would save $7.7 billion in law enforcement costs and could generated as much as $6.2 billion annually if marijuana were taxed like alcohol or tobacco.
The same argument could obviously be made about any human behavior, and the government buys it in some cases (gambling) and mostly doesn't in others (prostitution, for example). I'm not entering into that particular rhetorical thicket, but I bring it all up as an excuse to make a couple of points about the law from a libertarian perspective.
1. Outputs are more important than inputs. It shouldn't be of great concern to anybody what I ingest or read or watch on TV. What matters is how I behave, no matter what caused it or whatever I might be under the influence of. The criminal justice system sometimes heeds this distinction, not caring, for example, if I drink myself silly every night. It only gets involved if I drive under the influence or get drunk and start beating up people or stripping at noon on Main Street. On drugs other than alcohol, it makes the presumption that the harmful effects on society are so probable that my freedom to act should be curtailed. This assumption, it seems fair to say, is more true for something like crack than it is for something like marijuana.
2. Anything that is a form of theft -- one taking something from someone else that which one is not entitled to -- is a legitimate target of the law; any law that does not address a form of theft should be treated with skepticism. Murder is theft of a life. Rape is theft of free will. Fraud is theft of trust. Things I do in private or with another consenting adult steal nothing from anyone, whether it's smoking pot or visiting a prostitute or getting my hair cut by unlicensed barber.
Those two rules don't cover everything, and it is possible to think of contradictions and exceptions. But just using them as guiding principles could get rid of about 90 percent of the laws we now have, which most libertarians would say is about right. The law would be more certain, more enforceable and more understandable.
It would also better fulfill its primary function, that of "legislating morality," that thing so many people back in the 1960s said couldn't or shouldn't be done. I use "morality" in its older, broader sense of "how we treat others." It is the purpose of the law both to let us know what we may not do and what we may reasonably expect from others in a civilized society. I don't think it does either very well these days.
