When then-Senator Barack Obama was evaluating a potential run for the presidency in 2006, he was asked if he’d smoked marijuana. His response was, “When I was young, I inhaled frequently. That was the point (of smoking).” He was praised for his candor, and the statement drew a sharp contrast between former President Bill Clinton’s waffling when he described having smoked marijuana once but not having inhaled.
There is also a video recording of former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger smoking marijuana and proudly stating he had also inhaled.
What was not discussed was how either of these politicians’ careers would have virtually ended had they been caught for doing what they admitted to doing.
In 2014, law enforcement across this country arrested 700,993 people for marijuana-related incidents. Of those 700,993, 88 percent of them were for possession of marijuana.
There is a certain irony in incarcerating Americans for actions that the highest level of civil servants have admitted to doing. Furthermore, there is a tremendous financial, social and economic cost to incarcerating Americans for possession of marijuana (among other non-violent drug offences).
In his final year in office, President Obama should take steps that work toward the legalization of marijuana, starting with a mandate that the federal government will refuse to fund incarcerations for marijuana-related crimes. Doing so will save precious tax dollars, give correctional officers much needed bandwidth to pursue violent crimes, and siphon money away from black markets and into the coiffeurs of a federal government that has run a large deficit for the past several decades.
According to the Urban Institute Justice Policy Center, we spend an average of $21,006 per person per year to incarcerate someone in a minimum-security prison in the United States. With total U.S. debt at more than $19 trillion, this does not feel like money well-spent.
The other side of the economic cost is the toll that incarceration has on the labor force. It not only takes years away from people’s working lives, but it teaches this population how to become better criminals. Better-trained criminals mean more resources will be siphoned away from police departments as well.
Keeping people out of the correctional system for non-violent drug offenses is another benefit of marijuana legalization. In an interview in Vice with Jeff Smith — a professor in urban policy at the Milano School of International Affairs, Management, and Urban Policy in New York — and a former inmate, they recounted how jails can be a dehumanizing place filled with rape and how many prisons are permissive of rape among the inmates. Furthermore, according to Smith, “In prison, your bonds with law-abiding society are being broken down and your bond with other criminals is being strengthened.” The human cost of the correctional system is felt when inmates’ relationships to society get eroded and as these individuals exit prison, they struggle to find housing, job opportunities and rehabilitation.
Legalizing marijuana has the potential to bring in millions of dollars in tax revenue. As of February 2015, Colorado has generated over $53 million in tax revenue, which was short of estimates that the measure would bring in more than $70 million in the first year.
As of October 2015, 58 percent of Americans back marijuana legalization, up from 36 percent in 2003. In Michigan, the necessary number of signatures (320,000) were gathered, but a recent rule change means that marijuana legalization will probably not be on the ballot in November.
Meanwhile, marijuana gets dismissed in national politics as an issue for stoners, with many politicians putting it low on their priority list. President Obama said that marijuana legalization is not one of his top priorities for 2016. However, there are few issues where executive action has the immediate potential to save tens of billions of dollars and keep hundreds of thousands of non-violent offenders out of jail. Marijuana is one of those issues, and we should all care more about legalization.
Shawn Danino can be reached at danino@umich.edu