Mark Kleiman

U.S. drug policy has sometimes implicitly — and incorrectly — assumed that all drug-related harm is caused by drug use, so reducing drug use necessarily reduces drug harm proportionately. Instead, drug policy should try to reduce the sum of both harms incident to drug consumption — including harms to users as well as harms to others — and policy-ge...

Can a state legalize something that the federal government prohibits? The states retain a degree of sovereignty; the Constitution does not allow the federal government to order state governments to create any particular laws or to require state and local police to enforce federal...

When did medical-marijuana get started in the United States? Marijuana has been used for therapeutic purposes for thousands of years (see ­chapter 5). However, in medicine as in other uses, marijuana had been largely replaced with newer substitutes even before it became...

If Uruguay, Alaska, and Oregon have all legalized, why focus on Colorado and Washington? As of this writing, five major jurisdictions have legalized large- scale production and retail sale for nonmedical purposes: Colorado and Washington State in 2012, Uruguay in 2013, and Alaska and Oregon...

As noted in Chapter 14, five major jurisdictions have legalized large- scale production for nonmedical purposes: Colorado and Washington State in 2012, Uruguay in 2013, and Alaska and Oregon in 2014. And there is Jamaica, whose 2015 law theoretically allows large- scale production only...

What does “marijuana” mean? “Marijuana” is the common (and legal) American term for the dried flowers and leaves of the plant Cannabis sativa , and for the plant itself. The flowers contain concentrated amounts of psychoactive (mood- altering) chemicals known as cannabinoids (produced only...

Marijuana- legalization advocates often say that we should “regulate marijuana like alcohol.” What would that mean? US states vary in the way they handle alcohol, and some still allow sales only by state stores, but most apply more or less the following rules: Production, distribution,...

Astoundingly little. Much is claimed, but little is known. One thing is certain: people across the globe have enjoyed it for thousands of years, and more than 100 million do so today. Users report that getting high is relaxing and pleasurable, and that it...

Why is it difficult to measure the consequences of marijuana use? Marijuana use carries risks. Some are well established; some are probably real; some turn out to be mostly imaginary. Measuring the extent of marijuana- related damage to users, their families, their neighbors, and the...

Are there options in between prohibition and commercial legalization? Yes. It’s possible to move a meaningful distance away from prohibition without jumping all the way to the sort of alcohol- style commercial availability described in ­chapter 9. Discussions of marijuana policy in the...

We don’t necessarily agree, and none of us is sure. Mark thinks that marijuana prohibition is so broken that even a relatively badly managed legalization is likely to turn out better, especially in terms of arrests and the illicit market, as well as the...

Should marijuana be legalized? Since 2012 four US states have legalized commercial for-profit marijuana production and use, while Washington DC has legalized possession, growth and gifting of limited amounts of the plant. Other states, and even cities, have decriminalized possession, allowed for medical use, or reduced possession to a misdemeanor....

How many people use marijuana? Marijuana is the world’s most widely used illicit substance. Around the world, between 125 million and 225 million people use marijuana in the course of a year; that’s 3– 4 percent of the population aged 15 to 64. The amphetamine- type...

How does legalizing marijuana compare to legalizing all drugs? Legalizing marijuana involves both lower stakes and less uncertainty than legalizing any of the other major illicit drugs (cocaine/ crack, heroin, and methamphetamine). Not that the consequences of marijuana legalization would be minor or easy to...

Does it make sense for marijuana to be a Schedule I substance? Yes, until the federal process finds it has medical value. The Controlled Substances Act (CSA) divides abusable drugs into five groups, called “schedules,” numbered from I to V. Schedule V includes only...

What does it mean to legalize a drug? Legalization means allowing production, distribution, and selling of a drug. Possession and use would be legal for all or most adults, albeit subject to the general rules governing any form of commerce— for example, the prohibition on...

Is marijuana medicine? Marijuana products used for medical purposes range from conventional cannabis flowers to synthetic cannabinoids produced in a lab. Even among plant extracts, there’s a contrast between boutique oils made by individual farmers and processors (e.g., Charlotte’s Web, which is discussed in...

How many states have legalized or decriminalized marijuana? Many states have liberalized their marijuana laws; the exact count depends on the definitions one uses. As of the fall of 2015, four states have legalized commercial for- profit industries to produce marijuana for general adult use,...

Policy analysis, in keeping with Jeremy Bentham’s principle of seeking “the greatest good for the greatest number,” tends to focus on aggregate or average effects, with an occasional glance at distributional issues: in particular, the effects of a policy on those currently disadvantaged. Politics,...

As both Yogi Berra and Werner Heisenberg pointed out, it’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future. Many of the forecasts below are likely to turn out to be wrong. But there can still be value in trying to think systematically about the...

Colorado and Washington were the first states to legalize the production and sale of cannabis without a medical recommendation; Oregon and Alaska have followed suit, and additional states will likely do so in coming years. The effects of legalization are multi-dimensional, hard to predict, difficult to measure, and dependent on policy details. The...

The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act [P.L. 111–31] gives the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) the authority to regulate tobacco products, including placing restrictions on product composition, sale, and distribution. A complete accounting of the costs and benefits of any tobacco regulation includes harms from possible illicit...

Laws that prohibit, regulate, or tax cigarettes can generate illicit markets for tobacco products. Illicit markets both reduce the efficacy of policies intended to improve public health and create harms of their own. Enforcement can reduce evasion but creates additional harms, including incarceration and violence. There is strong evidence that more...

The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act [P.L. 111-31] gives the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) the authority to regulate tobacco products, including placing restrictions on product composition, sale, and distribution. A complete accounting of the costs and benefits of any tobacco regulation includes harms from possible illicit...

Passage of marijuana-legalization initiatives in Colorado and Washington poses a problem for the federal government: marijuana remains illegal under federal law, but the federal government lacks the capacity to fully enforce that law without state and local cooperation. Complete deference to state legalization would put each state’s cannabis policy...

Eight questions that can help form a better drug quality research are discussed. The fundamental policy question concerning any drug is whether to make it legal or prohibited. Accepting that binary simplification, the choice becomes what kind of problem one prefers. Use and use-related problems will be more prevalent if the substance is legal. Poly...

Drug law enforcement in source and transit countries such as Mexico naturally tends to increase the incentives for drug-related violence, unless enforcement is configured deliberately to create disincentives instead. A program of focused enforcement aimed sequentially at the most violent drug-dealing organizations in Mexico might succeed in reducin...

This article explains why various policies are or are not likely to reduce the amount of crime associated with drugs, by marrying a simple typology of the types of drug-related crime with analysis of how different interventions affect drug markets and drug use. Section I addresses the science half of the literature but forgoes the usual detailed re...

While there have always been norms and customs around the use of drugs, explicit public policies--regulations, taxes, and prohibitions--designed to control drug abuse are a more recent phenomenon. Those policies sometimes have terrible side-effects: most prominently the development of criminal enterprises dealing in forbidden (or untaxed) drugs and...

What is drug-abuse control policy? That drugs are sometimes used beneficially, and sometimes abused, is not a new insight: the Bible has some nice things to say about wine and some rude things to say about drunkenness. Individuals and groups defend themselves against drug-abuse risks...

What is a drug? A drug is a chemical that influences biological function (other than by providing nutrition or hydration). Some drugs come from plants, some from laboratories. Some are traditional and familiar, others novel. A drug’s effects can be benign or harmful,...

Why do arguments about drug policy get so irrational and so mean-spirited? Patterns of drug taking are intertwined with personal and social identity. The drugs people use, or don’t use, define them as much as their clothing, the music they listen to, the sports they...

How do terrorists get a cut of the drug business? Political terrorism requires a group of people with some level of mutual trust and willingness to break the law, plus the capacity to move and manage people, material, and money, often across international borders. Those...

Is it drugs that cause crimes, or drug policies? Both. The relationship between drug use and crime is complicated. It isn’t as simple as a drug-crazed person losing control and going on a rampage. Although certain types of substance-abusing offenders actively engage in crimes directly...

How is drug enforcement unlike enforcement of other laws? Illicit drugs are traded in markets, and the effects of enforcement depend on the response of buyers and sellers. Dealers adapt to enforcement pressure, and seized drugs and traffickers tend to be replaced. Criminal justice sanctions...

The answer to that crucial question depends on judgments about right and wrong, and about the relative importance of different good and bad things, as well as on predictions about the outcomes of alternative policies. It also depends on one’s willingness—or reluctance—to make big changes....

Can abusable drugs be beneficial? Yes, in many ways, some recognized by the current laws, others not. The international drug-control treaties and associated national drug-control laws include explicit lists (“schedules”) of substances that have medical use and also carry a risk of abuse. Painkillers, notably...

Do international programs offer a quick fix to drug problems? Most illicit drugs consumed in most countries around the world have been imported from abroad. This understandably fuels desires to get to the root of drug problems by stopping drug production in source countries. But...

What are risk factors for drug use? Protective factors? Risk factors are traits that are statistically associated with drug use, meaning that someone who has the risk factor is more likely to use drugs than is an otherwise similar person who does not have the...

Do all drug abusers need treatment? No. Natural recovery—also called “self-change” or “spontaneous remission”—is the most frequent exit from all manner of problem behaviors, including abuse of, or dependency on, alcohol, illicit drugs, cigarettes, shopping, and gambling. Calling the process “spontaneous” or “natural” is a...

The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.

Objective To identify changes in drug abuse control measures that would reduce non-drug crime.Method Policy analysis.Results Expanding current anti-drug efforts in the conventional triad of enforcement, prevention, and treatment (including drug courts) holds out little hope of reducing non-drug crime. Routine drug law enforcement risks increasing c...

Because punishment is scarce, costly, and painful, optimal enforcement strategies will minimize the amount of actual punishment required to effectuate deterrence. If potential offenders are sufficiently deterrable, increasing the conditional probability of punishment (given violation) can reduce the amount of punishment actually inflicted, by "tipp...

Since the crime explosion of the 1960s, the prison population in the United States has multiplied fivefold, to one prisoner for every hundred adults--a rate unprecedented in American history and unmatched anywhere in the world. Even as the prisoner head count continues to rise, crime has stopped falling, and poor people and minorities still bear th...

The US is planning to release about 600,000 criminals from prison in 2008 who will begin various types of official supervision such as parole. Crime rates in the US have fallen to about half since their highs in the early 1990s, while in homicide,it retains has the highest rates in the developed world. The failure of parole and other forms of post-...

Current Federal laws over-punish minor crack dealers. A legislative fix for the problem has proven politically infeasible. Drug, form, and quantity, which form the basis of the existing sentencing schema, are relatively poor proxies of the dangerousness of the offender or the harm created by the conduct-pattern underlying the case. An administrativ...

Arguably, the most important public health improvement of the 20th century is the virtual elimination of the most deadly waterborne infectious diseases, such as cholera, through the treatment of drinking water (CDCP, 1999). But current treatment practices have not reduced health risks to zero. Recent studies indicate that waterborne infectious dise...

s. If drug trafficking is inherently violent, and if illicit drug use catalyzes criminal and other delinquent behavior (immediately as intoxication reduces inhibition and stimulates aggression, and in the longer term through the impacts of longterm substance abuse on character, lifestyle, and non-criminal opportunities), then it seems to follow tha...

SUMMARY Crime - at least crime of the sort which often leads to arrest and punishment - tends to attract those who are reckless and impulsive, rather than those who fit the model of self-interest ed rationality. That simple observation has strong implications for efforts aimed at both deterrence and rehabilitation, but those implications have eithe...

Criminal justice agencies, and especially agencies supervising offenders not behind bars, increasingly use drug testing as a means of offender monitoring and control. The frequent use of drugs such as cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and alcohol has been linked to crime via either expense or intoxication. drug testing can provide relatively inexpe...

The evident contradictions between The Prince and the Discourses, and between the teaching of The Prince and Machiavelli's republican loyalties, pose a famous puzzle. The puzzle can be solved by reading The Prince as a Socratic dialogue invovling a Counselor and a Prince, in which only the Counselor speaks. If The Prince is a drama rather than an e...

Drug control efforts are conventionally divided into supply-side (enforcement) and demand-side (preventive education and treatment) policies. The economic concept of factors of production can help illuminate the conditions that support drug consumption and distribution. The factors necessary for drug markets are a common venue; the buyers' access t...

If enforcement resources are constrained, the expected value of the penalty facing potential violators falls as the frequency of violation rises. Thus trends in rule-breaking will tend to be self-reinforcing, as illustrated by a Schelling-type tipping model. The search for “root causes” of high violation rates may therefore be in vain. Enforcement...

The supply of heroin in the United States appears to have grown substantially in recent years, although it is not clear what impact this has had on consumption. Conventional indicators have shown only modest increases, but for a variety of reasons one would not expect increases even if we are in the early years of a new heroin use epidemic. It is e...

A random-sample, anonymous survey of the members of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) was conducted in spring 1990 measuring the attitudes and experiences of American oncologists concerning the antiemetic use of marijuana in cancer chemotherapy patients. The survey was mailed to about one third (N = 2,430) of all United States-based...

Increasing public concern about drug dealing, particularly the spread of the market for cocaine in smokable form ("crack"), has dramatically increased the volume of drug-enforcement activity by state and local police. Drug enforcement serves multifarious and sometimes competing goals: reducing drug abuse, controlling predatory crime, preventing the...

Marijuana and cocaine, two mass-market drugs, have been the object of a major campaign by the federal government over the past five years. That campaign apparently has not led to a significant tightening in the availability of the two drugs, though the relatively high prices of these drugs historically are a consequence of enforcement. The reason f...