What weed costs

While Stephen Harper rubs his big, white belly in anticipation of the gluttonous feast he foresees as reward for his new Canadian drug war, he might want to take a step back from the buffet line to study the clear cash drain similar efforts have on his great American heroes. Proving their love affair with hugely expensive wars they’ll never win extends beyond oil-rich nations, a newly released analysis of the economics of pot prohibition estimates that keeping pot criminalized is costing tax-payers $41.8-billion a year.

Authored by Jon Gettman, a pot-law reform activist and head of the Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis, “Lost Taxes and Other Costs of Marijuana Laws” crunches the numbers to roughly $10.7-billion in costs to arrest and prosecute marijuana offenders, with another $30-billion calculated as tax revenue lost by keeping the green herb on the black market.

Based predominantly on official U.S. government stats, the report, according to Marijuana Policy Project executive director Rob Kampia, spells out a “massive waste of taxpayer dollars.” The FBI recently released figures showing a record-breaking 829,627 marijuana-related arrests in 2006, 89 per cent of which were merely possession charges.

by Scott Saxon