BIO

Cliff Mason is the author of Millennial Money. He is the Senior Writer of CNBC's Mad Money with Jim Cramer, and has been that program's primary writer, in cooperation with and under the supervision of Jim Cramer, since he began at CNBC as an intern during the summer of 2005. Mason was the author of a column at TheStreet.com during 2007, which he describes as "hilarious, if short-lived." He graduated from Harvard College in 2007. It was at Harvard that Mason learned to multi-task, mastering the art of seeming to pay attention to professors while writing scripts for Mad Money. Mason has co-written two books with Jim Cramer: Jim Cramer's Mad Money: Watch TV, Get Rich and Stay Mad For Life: Get Rich, Stay Rich (Make Your Kids Even Richer). He is 100% responsible for any parts of either book that you did not like. Mason has also had a fruitful relationship with Jim Cramer as his nephew for the last 23 years and will hopefully continue to hold that position for many more as long as he doesn't do anything to get himself kicked out of the family.

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Jan.15

8:33 AM ET

Thursday, 15 Jan 2009

Is Now The Time To Legalize Drugs?

Posted By:Cliff Mason

Topics:Laws and Legislation | Barack Obama | Stock Market

This may be apocryphal, but when FDR was running for President for the first time in 1932, he said something along the lines of "What America needs now is a good, stiff drink."

Then he won and went on to help end prohibition.

Well, now we've got a new Democratic President coming into office, we're in similarly dire economic straits, and maybe what America needs is a nice toke?

It's time to legalize, or at least decriminalize, drugs. Admittedly this would be a blow to the flourishing prison industry at a time when we don't want to cause additional job losses.

But perhaps we could make up some of those lost prison-guard jobs by opening up new rehab clinics and filling them up with addicts who need treatment.

Special Report: A Gallery of Medical Marijuana

The voters are miles ahead of the politicians on this issue. Most national politicians would rather admit to using drugs than come out in favor of decriminalizing them. But in Massachusetts, a resolution decriminalizing the possession of small amounts of marijuana passed with the support of 65% of voters, despite opposition from the governor on down. The politicians seem to believe it's political suicide to favor a more rational drug policy, and even the massive popularity of measures like Question 2 in Massachusetts can't convince them otherwise.

Barack Obama won't admit that the war on drugs is a failure, but in his autobiography he admitted to doing cocaine in his youth. During the primaries the Clinton campaign tried to gin-up a scandal out of this fact. I think the real scandal is that the President Elect believes that other people should go to prison for something that he, and many others, get away with Scott free. The same goes for Bill Clinton, who smoked marijuana but "never inhaled."

The war on drugs does two things: it makes the business of drugs more profitable and more violent, and it sends lots and lots of people to prison.

Wouldn't it be better if we could bring this business out into the open, slap some taxes on it, and keep people from shooting each other? Of the 2.3 million people incarcerated in this country, more than half are in prison for drug-related offenses. That's unconscionable, and I believe future generations will see this fact, more than the pseudo-legalization of torture under the Bush Administration, as the great moral failing of our time. As the late, great Milton Friedman, an opponent of the War on Drugs from the very beginning when Nixon initiated hostilities, put it, "there is no light at the end of that tunnel. How many of our citizens do we want to turn into criminals before we yell "enough"?"

No one believes that illegal drugs are anything but harmful, but Americans, or at least our leaders, use that fact to stop any discussion of a rational policy to deal with the problem.

I hope the new guy will be different. For now my generation is much more progressive on this issue than older Americans. But I wonder what will happen to younger proponents of decriminalization as they grow up and have children. It's a fact that we can't prevent people from getting their hands on drugs in this country by locking up dealers and using F-16s to spray herbicides all over Colombia. We've tried for over 30 years, and the only thing the policy succeeds at is ruining lives.

What kills me is that nobody seems to care, not about the human cost, or even about the financial cost.