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Marijuana (or: Econ 101)

Well, it looks like Ken Lay has chickened out of his Senate hearing appointment, and now they're going to have to subpoena him. The article ends with a nice quote from the Chairman of the SEC, Harvey Pitt:

Pitt lamented the impact of Enron's dissipation on regular people who trusted the company. "It is these Americans whose faith fuels our markets, who have no lobby and no trade associations, whose interests are, and must be, paramount," he said. "I am appalled at what happened to them as a result of Enron's collapse."

Chairman Pitt's concern for the average American investor would be truly heartwarming... if only he hadn't played such a large part in creating the legal environment that let Enron rip off those investors in the first place. Oops!

Well, the Superbowl is over, and the Patriots, 14-point underdogs, beat the St. Louis Rams 20-17 in an exciting last-minute field goal. But even more exciting, apparently, were the Partnership for a Drug-Free America's Superbowl TV commercials, which pointed out that the drug trade supports criminals and terrorists. Well, the PDFA was sloppy; they conflated the tens of millions of dollars of Taliban heroin funding with the six hundred million dollars of cocaine money that went to the FARC with the rest of the illegal drug industry.

This of course prompted numerous self-righteous screeds from the other side that managed to muddy the issue further, claiming that the government is trying to tie marijuana to Al-Qaeda. I admit, the screedists did a good job. The straw-man argument that "smoking a joint supports terrorism!" can now be considered Officially Knocked Down.

On the other hand... according to NORML, Americans consume at least 1200 to 1800 metric tons of 6% THC cannabis per year. Here's the bad news: those hundreds of metric tons were not grown by your goofy slacker college roommate in his dorm room closet. No, I'm afraid the bulk of the revenue went to some very anti-social men in Northern California or Mexico. Men with guns and bear traps and dogs trained to kill. And what products and services did these men purchase with their profits? As much as I wish otherwise, methinks they did not invest in Enron.

We Americans have spent the last few months bitching and moaning about "the root causes" of terrorism. Where do these grievances come from? "Why do they hate us?" Well, we can debate whether the Arab world is justified in hating us from now 'till Doomsday. In the meantime, I'll tell you who does have real grievances against the USA. The Colombians, that's who.

Of course, if we legalized all drugs, this problem would go away. And I've got no objections to that. That's the best way to cut the legs out from under the organized criminals who profit from the business. However, just because you support drug legalization, don't for a second think that means you're pure as the driven snow when you consume them. Your choices have consquences; unfortunately, you don't usually end up paying them.

Posted by Evan Goer on Feb. 04, 2002 at 9:58 AM