It's A Gray Area: It's as 'sound as the dollar' - by Judge Jim Gray

I still remember my parents commenting during the 1964 presidential election about the silliness of Barry Goldwater's recommending that we go back on the silver and gold standard for our nation's monetary system. But now I know that Sen. Goldwater was right, and had we followed his recommendations, we would be the most economically healthy country in the world today.

The problem is that as soon as a country goes away from securing its currency with gold or silver — which it actually pledges to redeem to anyone who bears its paper currency — that country can almost never resist the temptation simply to print more money to pay its obligations. The rationale is, of course, that "we are only borrowing money from ourselves," but this immediately reduces the value of the currency. And, as I read from economist Mark Skousen's book "A Tale of Two Dollars" (Investment Rarities Inc., 2010), this is what we have starkly seen in our country since the middle 1960s.

During the Revolutionary War, our fledgling government printed lots of "Continental" dollars, which resulted it them losing more than 90% of their initial value. This also gave rise to the phrase "Not worth a Continental." Having experienced this result, the Founding Fathers responded by mandating in Article I Section 10 of our Constitution that no state could "make any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts."

From about 1815 until the beginning of World War I, all of the world's major currencies were on the gold and silver standard. Thus the British "pound" was literally the equivalent value of a pound of sterling silver. That also meant that inflation simply was not a problem, because before a country could print more of its currency, it had to obtain and store the equivalent amount of gold or silver to back it up.

Other than during the Civil War years when the federal government issued inflated "greenbacks" that were based only upon the "good faith and credit of the United States," our country was also on the gold and silver standard during that time. We mostly used Spanish silver coins that were called "thalers," which over time with our lax pronunciation we eventually called dollars. We also formed the practice of cutting those silver dollars into eight parts, which were soon called "pieces of eight." That is also the derivation of the term "two bits," which was what we colloquially called a quarter of a dollar.

But in 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt took us off the gold standard, devalued the dollar from $20 per ounce to $35 per ounce, and forced Americans to turn in their gold coins in exchange for Federal Reserve Notes of denominations of $5 and above. But we stayed on the silver standard until 1965, when the value of $1 in silver coins actually rose to about $1.29. This was caused by the inflation that resulted from the insistence of President Lyndon Johnson that we could pay for both "guns and butter" at the same time — to wit, both the "Great Society" and also the Vietnam War.

At this point many people took advantage of the disparity between the price of silver and the value of the Silver Certificate dollars by melting down the silver coins and selling the metal for a profit. In response, the federal government withdrew the Silver Certificate $1 bills, which promised they could be converted to silver, and replaced them with Federal Reserve Notes. The government also recalled all silver coins, and replaced them with coins made from nickel and other metals. Later it did the same thing when the copper in our pennies became worth more than 1 cent.

What did all of this do for the purchasing power of our money? For a comparison, in 1960 the value of a paper dollar and a silver dollar was the same. But by 2010, the purchasing power of that same paper dollar was down to 10 cents, while the purchasing power of the silver dollar had increased to $18. That means that, for example, the real price of a gallon of gasoline has actually decreased in the last 50 years, because in 1960 a dollar bought about five gallons of gas, and a silver dollar can buy more than that today!

Thus it is the irresponsibility of government in not resisting the temptation of printing more money to pay for its spending that has directly contributed to our financial instability. So yet again, and as Ronald Reagan used to say, "Government is not the answer to the problem, government is the problem."

In fairness it must be understood that no country today is still on the gold standard. Instead, like us, each one is on the "fiat" system, which basically means that businesses and private individuals are required to accept the government's currency for all transactions and the payment of debts and taxes. But, fortunately, since 1975 Americans again have been "allowed" by the government to own and invest in gold and silver coins and bullion. Thus in this time of economic uncertainty, many people have converted a large part of their investments into these precious metals.

So now our currency is once again just backed by the "full faith and credit" of the United States government, whatever that means, and it is up to each of us to do what we can to bring back the saying "sound as the dollar" to mean confidence, instead of a wry joke like with the "Continental." This is critical, because the most important way to keep our country safe and secure is to have a strong economy — and the best way for that to occur is for no spending initiatives or legislation to be passed unless they also set forth their source of funding.

For years we have pontificated to other countries that, due to the weakness of their currencies, they should "tighten their belts" and reign in their spending. Well now it is time, for the security of our country, children and grandchildren, that we take our own advice. Please remember that Libertarian thought when casting your vote Tuesday, and in all future elections.

JAMES P. GRAY is a retired judge of the Orange County Superior Court, the author of "Wearing the Robe: the Art and Responsibility of Judging in Today's Courts" (Square One Publishers, 2010), Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It, A Voter's Handbook, Effective Solutions To America's Problems and can be reached at jimpgray@sbcglobal.net or http://www.judgejimgray.com. Judge Jim Gray is also currently offering his 25 years of experience on the bench to ADR Services in Orange County for Arbitration and Mediation services.

Taking taxing to the most logical limits - by Judge Jim Gray

While contemplating the gathering of information to prepare for my 2009 income tax returns, I started thinking about all of the different and creative ways governments come up with to impose taxes on all of us. Worse yet, most of the time we are not really even aware of the extent of that taxation.

Have you thought about all of the occasions in our daily lives that the governments reach their hands into our wallets?

Obviously there are income taxes, where some people think the process of withholding money from our paychecks has made this tax less painful, and others feel the lost interest increases the pain. And, of course, there are capital gains taxes on investment earnings, and yearly taxes on the ownership of real property.

Then there are the state, county and city sales taxes. In Orange County, the total sales taxes are 8.75%, and in Los Angeles County they are 9.75%. That makes my neighbor, who owns a home improvement store just over the Orange County line into Los Angeles County, really upset, because his customers will actually drive about 10 miles farther to make expensive purchases inside Orange County just to save that 1%. But any way you look at it, all of us pay a pretty large amount of money in sales taxes.

Most of us are aware that motor fuels are also taxed at a high rate, but did you know how high they are? In California motorists pay 63.9 cents per gallon for gasoline, and 72.9 cents for a gallon of diesel — and that is in addition to sales taxes! Imagine how much money that brings into various governments each day. The rationale for those high taxes is that the money raised will be used to build and maintain our roads and other transportation facilities. But often politicians find a way to divert it to other purposes, because they simply cannot ignore large amounts of money that are not being spent.

Other large sources of revenues for governments are the so-called “sin” taxes that are imposed upon cigarettes, which are taxed in California at 87 cents per pack, hard alcohol at $3.30 per gallon, and wine and beer at 20 cents per gallon. We also have inheritance taxes, or the so-called “death tax,” that take a fairly large chunk of the estates of deceased people above a certain value.

Those are the taxes that are normally the most visible. But have you looked recently at your telephone bills? My examination of my monthly Verizon cell-phone bill showed me that of the $30.81 total charges, 8.6%, was for various taxes and surcharges. There was even a charge of $1.75 not to publish my listing! (Maybe we all should start businesses of not publishing people’s telephone numbers, and then charge them a fee for it?) I would also pass along to you the amount of taxes on our AT&T home telephone bill, but I couldn’t figure them out.

There are similar taxes, fees, charges and surcharges on all other utility bills as well, which are mostly blended into the overall bills to obscure how much they are, or what they are for. But you get the idea. Similarly, I recently I flew from Orange County to Washington D.C., and calculated that the “taxes, fees and charges” came to a full 15.7% of the cost of the ticket.

The worst situation for added charges that I am aware of is, embarrassingly enough, with so-called “penalty assessments” that the court system imposes when people have committed a traffic violation. That means that when, for example, a person is ordered to pay a traffic fine of $100, the court is required to order the person also to pay penalty assessments of an additional $344.

These fees are assessed for such things as DNA testing, court security screening, the law library fund, court maintenance, traffic school and even unspecified “surcharge” fees. And it has been known that some judges inform traffic offenders only that they will be paying a fine of $100 “plus penalty assessments,” so the people find out how much they will actually owe only when they go down to the clerk’s office with checkbook in hand.

I was as much in the “responsibility business” as any judge, but it seems to constitute an institutional lack of integrity to add such a high percentage of fees onto the fines that we assess. Nevertheless, judges are expressly forbidden by law to waive any of these fees, because the folks in government are so hungry for extra money, and have run out of other options.

How has this situation become so extreme? The answer is that governments continue to grow and, therefore, they need more money to pay for additional employees, assets and programs. This is logical because it is the natural function of any bureaucracy to increase its size and power. But do we really need to have and pay for all of this government? For example, do we really need agencies like the Bureau of Indian Affairs? The Native Americans don’t think so.

Similarly, and as has been discussed in previous columns, why should governments own things like county fairgrounds, sports complexes and theaters? If there is a public need or desire for such things, the free market will provide them — and run them much more efficiently along the way. Or why should the government be involved in the partial ownership and running of automobile companies, banks or health-care services? Setting up oversight over these activities? Certainly, but that’s all.

In addition, why do we continue to require that mail delivery be publicly run? In today’s world of electronic bill paying, e-mail correspondence and computer teleconferencing, the amount of first-class mail that is being sent is steadily decreasing. Nevertheless, we continue to maintain the expensive U.S. Postal Service monopoly. Why not instead have Congress decide how much of a bounty it is worth to the public to have things like newspapers and magazines delivered through the mail and pay that amount to any carrier that will deliver them? Then we can open up all mail delivery services on low-bid contracts to companies like Federal Express or the United Postal Service, who will do the job better, and for far less money than the U.S. Postal Service.

Finally, I want to pass along to you a story. When I was a military lawyer at the U.S. Naval Air Station in Guam, for reasons only the Navy could explain, I was given the responsibility of overseeing the station’s child care center. When I took over the operation, the numbers of children left by parents with the center per day were down, the center itself was losing money, the staff was underpaid, and morale was poor. After assessing the situation, I ordered that the charges per hour per child be reduced, employees who were performing well be given a raise, and non-performing staff be let go.

Within four weeks, the center was full of children, morale was high, and we were making a profit. Government can learn important lessons from experiences like that. Often by reducing taxes and other fees the economy will improve, the government will actually increase its gross revenues, and everyone will be better off.

So the ultimate Libertarian lesson is that you and I must exercise the supervisory powers we inherently have over government as taxpayers and voters to reduce the size, power and expense of government. Then we can reduce taxes and other related fees, and along the way be able to spur the economy and the creation of jobs much better than we are doing today. But without our involvement, governments will continue sinking into their present sea of red ink.



JAMES P. GRAY is a retired judge of the Orange County Superior Court, the author of Wearing the Robe – the Art and Responsibilities of Judging in Today’s Courts (Square One Press, 2008), and can be contacted at jimpgray@sbcglobal.net or via his website at www.judgejimgray.com .

My Movitation - Judge Jim Gray's response to a letter

Dear Mark,

Thank you for the note. I worked hard on the book with the hope that it would increase a full, open and honest discussion of this critical area. 

When I became a trial court judge at the end of 1983, I had no particular thoughts about drug laws one way or the other, except to enforce them. That is what I had done as a Navy JAG attorney, and that is what I did as a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles.

Then the thing that struck me first in this area when I was on the bench was that alcohol-related offenses were the largest problem area that we faced, and we were doing almost nothing about it. So I helped to establish what was probably the first Drug Court in the country. We screened every drinking driver that came into our 
courts to determine who were the alcoholics (We called them "High Risk Problem Drinkers," but they knew what we meant.), and then placed them onto a program 
that required total abstinance from alcohol. We were successful in keeping 65 % of these people off alcohol for 8 months, which was as long as I was able to keep 
statistics. We also received letters from, for example, wives that told us they were going to divorce their husbands because of their drinking. But now that they were
on our program, thank you, because you have given me my husband back. We didn't need to receive too many of these letters to know that we were on to something 
good.

So with this experience, it did not take me long to realize that we were facing similar problems with the other mind-altering, sometimes addicting drugs. And that jail and prison was not the answer. What worked was four things: education, prevention and treatment, positive economic incentives to do what was socially acceptable, and individual responsibility for one's actions. But trying to control what people put into their bodies was not working. And along the way, the drug money problems were dwarfing the actual drug problems. 

So, being a fairly clean-cut, conservative judge in a conservative county who had never used any form of illicit drug, I decided that few people could cause others to listen to the message more than I could. (It certainly was not a "career-enhancing" thing to do.) So in April of 2001, I actually held a press conference, and I spoke out about my conclusions as publicly as I could. And I continue to do so today.

So please use whatever your personal experiences and observations are, and help us to discuss this critically important issue. The beheadings in Mexico have almost nothing to do with drugs: they are all about drug money. And so are a large number of other problems with violence, corruption, disregard for the law, supporting terrorism, and directly leading our children into a lifestyle of drug usage and drug selling. Drug money is the major problem, and still we refuse even to discuss the issue.

And I would be interested in your thoughts, both in general, and about my book.

Thank you again for the note, and Good Luck to us all.

Judge Jim Gray

www.judgejimgray.com

DRUG PROBLEMS VS. DRUG MONEY PROBLEMS - by Judge Jim Gray

DRUG PROBLEMS VS. DRUG MONEY PROBLEMS - by Judge Jim Gray 05/04/08

As all sophisticated people know, life is full of distinctions. One of those critical distinctions that we will discuss today is the difference between drug problems, and there certainly are many, as opposed to drug money problems.


  There is no doubt that illicit drugs can sometimes be dangerous and addictive and cause harm. Many people’s health and lives have been ruined, and families torn apart emotionally and financially because of the havoc caused by the abuse of and addiction to illicit drugs. So without question this is a big problem.


  But there are also big problems that are caused exclusively by drug money. For example, for years we have been hearing and reading about the large-scale violence and corruption that takes place with drug dealers in Colombia, Mexico, Afghanistan and many other countries. And certainly the United States has had its share of this violence and corruption as well. These problems are not caused by the drugs themselves, they are caused by the drug money.


  Similarly, it is drug money that is causing drug-addicted people to commit crimes in order to get the money for their drugs. Obviously that includes burglaries, purse-snatchings, check offenses, shop-liftings, and prostitution. As a practical matter, all of the illicit drugs themselves are extremely inexpensive to raise, manufacture and package. In fact they are actually “dirt cheap.” The only reason they are expensive is because they are illegal, and that expense causes many crimes.


  For example, marijuana is not called a “weed” for nothing. It will grow virtually anywhere. In fact, for all of our efforts for its eradication, marijuana is presently the largest cash crop in California. (Number two is grapes, if you care.) And even though the DEA has gone to great lengths to convince us that the opium poppy can only be grown in mountainous regions, the National Park Service was actually growing those poppies for years at Thomas Jefferson’s home in Monticello before the DEA found out about it and made them take them out. (They are a beautiful flower.) So if the opium poppies will grow in Virginia, it is pretty obvious that they will grow anywhere.  


  But now I want to talk to you about another drug money problem that you probably are not aware of. The following scenario would take place in my courtroom about every four or five weeks when I was sitting on a Juvenile Court calendar. There would be, for example, a single mother of two small children who made a bad decision, namely she decided to hook up with the wrong boyfriend. The man would be selling drugs and the mother would generally be aware of it, but that is the way things were.


  One fine day the boyfriend would tell the mother that if she would take a package across town and give it to “Charlie,” he would give her $500 for her efforts. She would basically know the package contained drugs, but she was behind on her rent and the $500 would really help. So she would do it. And then she would be arrested and convicted for the offense of transporting drugs, and sentenced to five years in prison. Now to be honest, in today’s world being sentenced to five years in prison for transporting four ounces or so of cocaine is not an unreasonable sentence.  


But let me ask you a question: when the mother is put in prison, what happens to her children? Well, that answer is easy. The mother has legally abandoned her children since she is not available to take care of them. As a consequence they would all come to me in Juvenile Court on the Abused and Neglected Children calendar.  


So I would have this young mother in my court in a jail jumpsuit and handcuffs and I would tell her the truth, which was that she would not functionally be a part of her children’s lives for the next five years. At that point she would usually become misty-eyed at the realization. (Wouldn’t you?) But then I would tell her the brutal truth, which was that unless she was really lucky and either had a close personal friend or family member that was both willing and able to take custody of her children until she was released, her children would probably be adopted by somebody else by the time she got out of prison. At that point she would usually break down in tears. (Wouldn’t you?)


But if that human tragedy is not enough to break you down, I can probably dissolve you in tears as a taxpayer. Because in the first year, we will be spending upwards of $5,000 per month per child to keep them in a group home until they can be adopted by someone else. That means that in that first year we will be spending about $60,000 per child, times two children, plus an additional $25,000 to keep the mother in prison. As a result we will be spending somewhere around $145,000 in taxpayer money physically to separate a mother from her children!  


And who gets to enforce this situation? I do. Of course I do it because I have sworn to uphold the law. But I do not have to do it quietly, and that is why I am passing on this story to you.


So from my experience and perspective, if we would change our drug laws to hold people accountable for their actions instead of what they put into their bodies, we would begin greatly to reduce the drug money crime. And this could be easily done by undercutting the market for the sale of illicit drugs to adults.  


As was discussed in an earlier column, we could start by treating marijuana like alcohol. That would result in the savings of huge amounts of taxpayer money that are presently being spent on efforts to eradicate marijuana and to prosecute non-violent marijuana users. In addition, we could generate additional billions of dollars annually simply by taxing the sales of marijuana to adults, just like we do for alcohol. And all of this would have the substantial additional benefit of making marijuana less available for our teenagers than it is today. Why? Because illicit drug dealers don’t ask for i.d.


So what is not to like? We should pattern our conduct after most countries in Europe and start to address these problems as managers instead of moralists. This would reduce the crime, violence and corruption brought about by drug money. And then we could re-focus our efforts upon the actual drug problems themselves, like many countries are doing in Europe.


I think that everyone agrees that the federal government does not have all of the answers in this area, so why don’t we allow each state to decide what is best for its people? This is the concept of federalism upon which our great country was founded. There are viable alternatives to our present failed federal policy of Drug Prohibition, so let’s allow each state to try some alternatives. What do you think?

James P. Gray is a Judge of the Superior Court in California, the author of Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It - A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs (Temple University Press, 2001) and Wearing The Robe - The Art And Responsibilities of Judging In Today's Courts, has a blog at http://judgejamesgray.blogspot.com/. http://www.judgejimgray.com, and can be contacted at www.judgejimgray.com.

WE MUST REGAIN FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY! by Judge Jim Gray

WE MUST REGAIN FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY! by Judge Jim Gray 03/04/08

 In my view, the most dangerous threat to our safety and security is not the possibility of being invaded by another country, or even the terrorist actions of any of the world’s radical elements. Instead, the greatest threat facing the safety of our country is a weak national economy.  

 

  Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome and the Ottoman Empire were really not conquered by external forces. Instead, they overspent themselves to death and spread themselves too thin. That is a major lesson in history, and the Government of the United States of America has not learned that lesson.

 

  For example, the total revenues or tax collections for the federal government in 2007 was about $2,500 billion, but the total expenditures by the federal government were about $3,200 billion. So our government had a budget deficit in this past year alone of $

700 billion!

 

  To that we add the existing national debt of about $10,000 billion, which requires an annual debt service or interest payment of more than $350 billion. That is almost a billion dollars every day we make just in interest payments! At this point, we are making those interest payments both by borrowing the money from other countries, and by printing extra money – which contributes directly to inflation. So now can you see why the value of our dollar is declining?

 

  If this balance sheet were to be applied to any private business, that business would be in bankruptcy. No non-governmental enterprise could possibly survive such red ink. But our government continues to deepen the hole we are in. Among other things, this recent tax cut results in our government borrowing even more money just so that it can give that money back to the lower-earning population. Politically that may be smart; but additional borrowing adds even more to inflation, which will hurt virtually everyone.

 

  So all unproductive expenditures of the federal government must be eliminated, as a matter of our nation’s security! How can this be done? Well, we as taxpayers and voters must demand – now – that our government return to fiscal responsibility. In every respect, big and small.  

 

For example, recently I received a really expensive brochure “Report to the District” from Congressman John Campbell, naturally prepared at taxpayer expense. You probably received one too. Okay, fine – all congressional representatives do it. But that is no excuse. It had to have cost a lot of taxpayer money. So I sent him a letter and suggested that, if such a report was necessary at all, it be provided in the form of a simple and inexpensive letter. To his credit he wrote back personally and said that I would never again see such a mailing from him. (I took this as a positive sign, but maybe that means I am simply off his mailing list.)

 

But otherwise it is up to us all to monitor all of our government’s spending. If military bases are still open that are not needed for security purposes, let’s close them. We still are supporting about 1,000 military bases in about 30 countries all around the world, even apart from those in Afghanistan and Iraq. Are all of them necessary? Let’s be sensible, for once, and stop paying for things we do not need!

 

We have already discussed in an earlier column how we can reduce unnecessary government agencies and their spending by passing “Sunset laws” that would require each federal agency to justify its own existence every seven years or be disbanded. What have you as concerned readers and taxpayers done to discuss this proposal with your elected representatives? Come on, our future and that of our children and country is at stake. This is serious stuff!

 

Every line item in our federal budget must be scrutinized as publicly as possible, and the size of the federal bureaucracy must be reduced. This will materially reduce government spending. Government does not in itself produce wealth. Instead it detracts from it.

 

Look at the island country of Singapore. It has a population of only 5 million people, no natural resources, and is only 700 square kilometers in size. But Singapore has put a competitive economic plan into operation, to the degree that this small country is now the 17th wealthiest economy in the world! For all of its lack of resources, it has a growth rate of 7 percent per year and an unemployment rate of only about 1.7 percent. The United States, on the contrary, has a growth rate of only 1.5 percent, and even that is declining, and an unemployment rate of 4.9 percent.

 

We can and must do better! We can regain our economic strength without withdrawing from our military and other obligations. But we must have a change in thinking and a change in approach. And it begins with us. You and I must cause that change to take place!

 

To be honest, I am now 63 years old, and our economic troubles will probably not affect me personally all that much. But it is my generation that has been borrowing all of that money. And it will be our children’s generation and that of our grandchildren that will be forced to face the effects of our irresponsibility and pay it back.  

 

At the very least this is embarrassing, and at worst it is criminal. Please join with me in taking notice of these problems right away, helping to change our country’s course and leaving our descendents a better life than they are now facing. I think it is a matter of honor.

James P. Gray is a Judge of the Superior Court in California, the author of Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It - A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs (Temple University Press, 2001) and Wearing The Robe - The Art And Responsibilities of Judging In Today's Courts, has a blog at http://judgejamesgray.blogspot.com/. http://www.judgejimgray.com, and can be contacted at www.judgejimgray.com.

WHY ARE WE STILL DOING THIS? by Judge Jim Gray

WHY ARE WE STILL DOING THIS? (11) - by Judge Jim Gray 10/01/07


  Let us face facts and let us not mince words: Our nation’s policy of Drug Prohibition is not working. As a matter of fact, this policy is actually causing much more harm than the prohibited drugs themselves would ever be causing on their own – here and everywhere else around the world. And the irony is that we could literally bulldoze the entire country of Colombia, and even take Ecuador and Peru with it, and that would not make the slightest difference whatsoever with our drug problems in our country. Why? Because if the demand is here, the demand will be met. And if the demand is not met by drugs from Colombia, Ecuador or Peru, it will be met by drugs from Afghanistan, Nigeria or Thailand. Or even here in California! Today marijuana is the number one crop in California. (Number two is grapes, if you care.) In other words, we have failed to repeal the Law of Supply and Demand, and amazingly enough continue to express surprise at that result. And what is worse, we do not even let ourselves discuss the subject!


  In normal life if something does not work, we recognize that reality, explore our options and try something different. But even though virtually no one will say that our War on Drugs is working, we continue to spend ever more money and other resources on something that has been proven not to work. “If spending lots of money didn’t work, we’ll just have to spend much more” seems to be the philosophy.


  The evidence of the failure of the War on Drugs is all around us. Today illicit drugs almost literally could not be made more available if we tried. Look at it this way, people in prison can get all of the drugs they want. It costs more money, but they are fully available. For example, Charles Manson was transferred from Corcoran State Prison in California to a different facility a few years ago because he was found to be selling drugs from his prison cell. And he was in solitary confinement! So if we cannot keep drugs out of our prisons, what makes us think that we can keep them off the streets of any of our towns or cities?


Every day in our nation’s newspapers there are articles about violent deaths being caused not by drugs, but by drug money. With great fanfare we destroyed the Medellin Cartel. But did it make any difference? No, within just a few months the Cali Cartel was up and running. Now we have destroyed the Cali Cartel. Has it made any difference? Again the answer is no. Illicit drugs are just a big and successful a business as ever.  


As an example, just a few years ago the head of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration was quoted as saying that at any one time about 200 tons of cocaine are being warehoused in Mexico within three miles of the U.S. border just waiting to be smuggled into our country to any place where there happens to be a shortage. In addition, even though our government has spent about $470 billion on “Plan Colombia” with our military actions and spraying of herbicides in rural areas, the cost of Colombian cocaine in our country today is only about one-third of what is was in the 1980s. Of course, we are also seeing the same results in Afghanistan with heroin. And in case you have not noticed, violence if not actual warfare caused by drug money has broken out in Mexico along our border, and has literally spilled over the border into the Southwest United States.

 

Even when the police are successful in seizing a large quantity of drugs, that only temporarily reduces the supply, which increases the price of the drugs and in turn increases the incentives for people to sell them. The end result of this economic reality is that the policy of Drug Prohibition is doomed to failure, which means that “victory” increasingly is simply being defined as slowing down the pace of defeat.



When I discuss this issue publicly, the biggest argument I hear in favor of maintaining our policy of Drug Prohibition, “with all of its defects,” is that changing it would “send the wrong message to our children.” So what about our children? Actually our policy of Drug Prohibition is literally putting our children in harm’s way for each of two deeply disturbing reasons. First, it is easier today for children to obtain any illicit drug, if they want to, than it is alcohol. Why? Because illicit drug dealers make money by furnishing it to them. You might say that no one wants your teenage children to become addicted to cocaine, but you would be wrong, because some people make a great deal of money if that happens. As a result, lots of drug dealers offer free samples of illicit drugs to our children, even on their school campuses. Of course, that does not happen with regard to other sometimes dangerous and addicting drugs like alcohol and tobacco. Why? Because when we make drugs illegal, we give up all of our ability to regulate and control them. That means that by default the strength, quantities and purity levels of the drugs that are being sold and the age restrictions for the buyers are exclusively controlled by the illicit drug dealers, and they don’t ask for i.d.!


Secondly, and I saw this happen continually when I was a federal prosecutor, and later when I was presiding over a juvenile court calendar, every day adult drug sellers recruit our children to help them in their scurrilous business. Why? Because for a relatively small amount of money and the threat of violence, adult drug dealers can have all the young people they want to use as “go-fers,” lookouts and couriers, etc. And then just as night follows day, as soon as the reliability of the young people has been established, the adults trust them to sell small amounts of drugs in their communities. They do this, of course, so that the youngsters make more money, and so do the adults. So then ask yourself this question, when teenagers sell drugs in their communities, who do they sell to? Us? No, they will naturally sell to their teenage peers, thus recruiting more and more young people to a lifestyle of drug usage and drug selling. It is not a pretty sight, and it is all directly caused by our failed and hopeless policy of Drug Prohibition.


Yes, once we finally came to our senses and repealed Alcohol Prohibition we were still left with problems of alcohol misuse, abuse and addiction. But at least we were no longer plagued with the Al Capones and their violence and corruption, as well as the medical problems presented by the lack of quality control for the “bathtub gin.”


What should be our plan instead? In my view, we should resume using the Criminal Justice System in the way it was designed: to hold people accountable for what they do, instead of what they put into their bodies. Along those lines, it makes as much sense to me to put that gifted actor Robert Downey, Jr. in jail for his cocaine addiction, and he certainly seems to have one, as it would to have put Betty Ford in jail for her alcohol addiction. It is the same thing; it is a medical problem. But if Robert Downey, Jr., Betty Ford or you or I drive a motor vehicle while under the influence of any of these mind-altering drugs, that will still be an offense. Why is that? Because now those people would by their actions be putting the safety of other people at risk. When we finally are able to make that distinction in our approach, we will begin to make real progress in this area.


So what action should we take now? The first thing to do is for our President to appoint a blue ribbon commission to investigate the possibility of change – as publicly as possible. Then in my view the first substantive action we should take is to treat marijuana like alcohol. What would happen if we were to do that? Three things, and all of them positive. First, we taxpayers in California would literally save about a billion dollars every year that we now spend in a futile effort to eradicate marijuana, and to prosecute and incarcerate non-violent marijuana users. Secondly, we could tax the stuff, and raise about one and a half billion dollars every year for the state coffers. So those two things alone would change the budget deficit in California by about 2 ½ billion dollars every year. And that is money that we should use for drug education and drug treatment, which will result in decreased problem usage of all drugs. Or we could use the money to help finance health care for the uninsured people in our state and country. But the third thing would be more important than the first two combined, because this we would be making marijuana less available for our children than it is today, as we have already discussed. So what is not to like?  


Eighteenth-century English jurist William Blackstone said that “The law is the embodiment of the moral sentiment of the people,” and I certainly agree with him. But just because we change our approach to this serious problem does not at all mean we condone drug abuse, and our children will understand that concept. There are better ways of accomplishing our goals of reducing drug abuse and all of the crime, misery and corruption that accompany it. In fact, we will discuss some of the programs that are actually working in other countries around the world in this column next week. So stay tuned.


In the meantime, let us take off our muzzles, and give ourselves permission to discuss the subject of drug policy openly, fully and honestly. We have nowhere to go but forward!  


James P. Gray is a Judge of the Superior Court in California, the author of Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It - A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs (Temple University Press, 2001) and Wearing The Robe - The Art And Responsibilities of Judging In Today's Courts, has a blog at http://judgejamesgray.blogspot.com/. http://www.judgejimgray.com, and can be contacted at www.judgejimgray.com.