MaryJane & the Free Market

The author of a new study on marijuana use could have used an economics lecture from the late Christopher T. Warden, a journalism professor at Troy University. Maybe we’ll send them the textbook Professor Warden wrote which Accuracy in Academia is publishing, entitled, Voodoo Anyone? How to understand economics without really trying.

High prices, Professor Warden pointed out, discourage demand, as do negative consequences. Thus, Professor Warden noted in his chapter on crime, economic principles have an impact on criminal activity.

“Certainly, some criminologists and economists analyze the issue through a prism of dollars and cents,” Professor Warden observed. “It costs so many thousands of dollars to feed and house prisoners.”

“Or the suspects got away with just over $1 million dollars in small, unmarked bills. But one can also look at crime in price terms without putting a dollar figure to it.

Remember, prices are signals. They tell consumers and producers what would be useful

to buy and sell. Potential criminals make these same kinds of calculations.”

Although he offers much valuable information, Jon Gettman, Adjunct Assistant Professor in Criminal Justice at Shenandoah University in Winchester, Virginia, fails to connect these dots in the report he authored for The Bulletin of Cannabis Reform. “From 2003 to 2007, the number of annual marijuana arrests increased by 2.93% per year, while the number of annual marijuana users decreased by 0.21% per year,” Gettman reports.

After showing the penalties incurred for possession in different states, Gettman claims that “This penalty structure effectively demands that marijuana consumers make multiple small purchases of marijuana over time.”

“This works to prop up the price of marijuana and benefits the illegal market.” That it might discourage usage is a factor Gettman does not consider. He goes on to note that:

• “While some decriminalized states, such as Maine and Colorado, have high rates of marijuana use, others, including Mississippi and Nebraska, have below-average rates of use”; and
• “Some states, including South Carolina and Missouri, have among the highest arrest rates of marijuana users but low levels of marijuana use, while Washington, D.C. has both a high arrest rate and a high rate of use. Utah and North Dakota have low levels of use and below-average arrest rates, while states such as Alaska, Massachusetts and Montana have low arrest rates and high levels of use.”

Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia.