They do, however, cast further doubt on the strength of empirical support for Miron’s intuitively plausible theory. Figure 10 reveals why the added data from the 1990s onward weakens the estimated relationship between prohibition enforcement expenditures and homicide: federal per capita drug prohibition spending has continued to rise despite a steady fall in the homicide rate. A number of more general problems potentially plague the basic regression specifications: the enormous difficulty of drawing causal inferences from national time series data; the possibility that causality runs in both directions; and the omission of state enforcement expenditures and other possible explanatory factors. However, bearing in mind these various provisos, Miron’s analysis is consistent with, and provides a notable supplement to, more targeted analyses—such as the aforementioned study of New York murders—supporting the theory that criminalization does more harm by the systemic crime and violence it creates than good in any toxicologically-induced crime it may prevent.Related problems with our current approach to cocaine are mandatory minimum sentences and the differential treatment of crack and powder cocaine. As discussed earlier, there is a large racial disparity between African-Americans and Caucasians in terms of the percentage imprisoned for drug-related offenses. Much of this racial disparity is the result of mandatory sentences for possession and trafficking of crack which have been far more severe than those in place for powder cocaine. In the early 1990s, over 90 percent of defendants in crack cases were African-American compared with only 25 percent of defendants in powder cocaine cases .Mandatory sentencing laws for drugs generally prescribe a sentence based on the quantity of the drug in question.
Until just recently,indoor grow shelves under federal sentencing guidelines a defendant needed to possess an amount of powder cocaine one hundred times greater than the amount of crack cocaine in order to receive an equivalent sentence.93 Thus a defendant convicted of possessing 50 grams of crack cocaine with intent to distribute faced a mandatory minimum sentence of ten years whereas a defendant would need to possess 5 kilograms of powder cocaine to expect the same sentence. Though President Obama recently signed the Fair Sentencing Act, which is set to reduce the sentencing disparity ratio from to 100 to 1 to 18 to 1 , a significant differential will remain, and some states also have adopted more stringent sentences for crack cocaine than powder cocaine . Differences in state law treatment of the two drugs have the potential to be more important because more prisoners are convicted of crack offenses at the state rather than federal level each year. In addition to the racial disparities created by mandatory sentencing laws, scholars have also noted additional concerns regarding their implementation. First among these is the fact that drug amounts are determined by mixture weight rather than pure weight. This introduces sentencing distortion because drugs sold in the illicit market vary greatly in their purity. For example, the sale of coca leaf, which contains only 2 percent cocaine, is treated the same as the sale of pure powder cocaine in terms of weight, even though 100 grams of coca leaf has the same amount of cocaine as 2 grams of pure cocaine. The focus on weight also prevents a distinction between large-scale dealers, the “kingpins” of the business, and small time dealers. A “kingpin”may operate in such a way that he carries very little of a drug substance on him at any given time and thus when caught in possession with an intent to sell, receives a lighter sentence than one of his subordinates, who carries larger quantities of the substance in order to make frequent sales. Without the mandatory minimum sentences, judges would have more discretion to differentiate between the “kingpin” and the small-time dealer. Mandatory sentences shift power from judges to prosecutors because prosecutors have discretion concerning whether to charge an individual with a crime carrying a given minimum sentence, whereas once the defendant is convicted, under a mandatory sentencing scheme the judge lacks the discretion to reduce a sentence .
Deciding whether it is preferable to grant more power to judges or prosecutors is a judgment call which depends on whether one believes such power should be vested in the executive or judicial branch; however, the shift in power is a clear impact of mandatory minimum sentencing laws. Given the substantial costs of mandatory minimums, are they necessary or cost-justified deterrence mechanisms? Credible evidence suggests they are not. A 1997 empirical evaluation of the cost-effectiveness of mandatory drug sentences found mandatory minimums are less effective at reducing cocaine use than both conventional enforcement and treatment programs . The authors, part of the RAND Drug Policy Research Center, attempted to measure the effects on cocaine consumption of spending an additional $1 million on conventional enforcement, mandatory minimum sentences, or treatment. Looking at the 184,548 drug dealers convicted in state and federal courts during 1990, the authors estimated that were the federal mandatory minimum drug sentences94 applied to all of these dealers, the cost to the public for the additional prison time would be $22.5 billion. According to the model tested in this study, longer sentences influence cocaine consumption by raising the price of cocaine as dealers increase prices in order to offset the increased probability of a longer prison sentence. Using an estimate that a drug dealer must be compensated an additional $37,500 per additional year of incarceration and a cost to the public of $25,000 per year of incarceration, they estimated that each $1 spent on longer sentences will translate into a $1.50 increase in total costs to consumers of cocaine. Thus they found that an additional $1 million spent on longer sentences would increase cocaine prices by 0.004 percent.95 Over a 15 year time horizon given a dealer discount rate of 12 percent and an elasticity of demand for cocaine of 1, they determined that each additional $1 million spent on longer sentences reduces cocaine consumption by 12.6 kilograms nationwide . Given estimated total annual consumption of 291,000 kilograms, this represents a change far less than one-hundredth of one percent. If one assumes the relationship to be linear over this range,indoor garden table every increase in incarceration costs of $1 billion per year might be expected to reduce cocaine consumption by about 4.3 percent.
When evaluating treatment programs, the RAND authors relied on Rydell’s and Everingham’s study of cocaine treatment reporting that 13 percent of cocaine addicts abstain from hardcore cocaine use in the long-run following treatment and that 79 percent abstain during the 0.3 year length of the average treatment program. Given the $1,740 average cost of a treatment program, an extra $1 million could treat 575 heavy cocaine users, resulting in a 16 kilogram reduction in the first year. Over a 15 year time horizon, given that 13 percent of heavy users quit heavy use following treatment, these authors estimated that each $1 million spent on treatment would reduce cocaine consumption by 103.6 kilograms, compared with 12.6 kilograms for longer sentences, making treatment appear much more effective . While the linearity assumption might be more strained over this range, the comparison to the incarceration-increase numbers is revealing: an annual increase of $1 billion in spending on treatment might be expected to reduce cocaine consumption by 35.6 per cent. These findings are in line with Rydell’s and Everingham’s examination of the effectiveness of treatment compared with three other drug enforcement policies: source country control , interdiction and domestic enforcement . The authors found that the cost of crime and productivity loss from cocaine use decreases by $7.46 for every $1 spent on treatment whereas the same figure for source country control is $0.15 per dollar, $0.32 for interdiction, and $0.52 for domestic enforcement. Rydell’s & Everingham’s initial study was criticized for underestimating the decrease in cocaine use stemming from increases in cocaine prices due to source-country control, interdiction, and domestic enforcement. Repeating their study of policy effectiveness in 2000 assuming a more elastic demand for cocaine, Caulkins, Chiesa, and Everingham determined that treatment has a four-to-one advantage over domestic enforcement in reducing the costs of crime and productivity losses. Overall, this evidence on treatment versus severe punishment for those found possessing or dealing cocaine today suggests that mandatory treatment for drug offenders is a more cost effective solution. As with marijuana policy, there appear to be many potential improvements for cocaine policy, even within the regime of criminalization. In the United States—indeed, throughout the world—many individuals are drawn to substances that may harm them greatly. Public policy varies enormously with respect to these substances, partly based on the degree of addiction, the nature of harms, and historical experience. Though sugar, saturated fat, and high fructose corn syrup impose enormous health costs, regulation to discourage consumption of them is virtually non-existent; in fact, corn subsidies in particular have been criticized for perversely incentivizing poor diets. In contrast, tobacco and alcohol are subject to considerable regulation while remaining legal, and a host of drugs ranging from heroin and cocaine to methamphetamine, ecstasy, LSD, and marijuana are banned by state and federal law. Tobacco imposes high costs on a large proportion of users because the addiction is powerful and the health cost of decades of use will likely be great. Nonetheless, consumption rates tend to be high because the health costs are temporally distant, and governments tend not to prohibit consumption because current productivity and parenting ability are not discernibly impaired. Interestingly, perhaps the greatest domestic success in reducing consumption of harmful substances came for this lawful product, engineered largely through tax hikes via the settlement of tort litigation against the tobacco companies. Other harmful recreational substances vary in terms of addictiveness and the ability of large numbers of users to enjoy them sporadically and without substantial health cost or productivity impairment for work and parenting. But for sizeable percentages—perhaps 10 percent for marijuana users, 15 percent for alcohol and cocaine users, and almost 25 percent for heroin users —the personal and social costs are dramatic and substantial. It is largely to reduce these costs to this minority of users that governments have banned, and tried to keep as many people as possible away from marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroin . Estimates placing the economic costs of illegal drug abuse at levels roughly comparable to those costs for alcohol and tobacco underscore that there are no easy choices when it comes to drug policy. Aggressive efforts to limit consumption through a tough penal approach tend to restrain the costs from drug use while unleashing the high costs of enforcement and incarceration in a context of increased violence centered around the criminal gangs that run the drug trade. Conversely, legalization of alcohol and tobacco drastically reduces enforcement costs with respect to these substances while keeping the costs of consumption high. A cost-minimizing approach to drug policy might move us away from a punitive approach to control of the currently illegal drugs, while entailing aggressive measures to prevent underage consumption and constrain demand. On the other hand, while thorough consideration of policy toward legal drugs is beyond the scope of the present inquiry, comparisons of their toxicological effects and social costs with those attributable to such illegal drugs as marijuana and cocaine suggest that more vigorous pursuit of demand-restraint policies for alcohol and tobacco may result in a reduction of the social costs of those drugs. At some point, insights from social science and medical testing may be refined enough, and widely enough disseminated, to enable potential users to secure better advance notice regarding their particular susceptibility to the serious consequences of drug and alcohol abuse. At present, many individuals find out the hard way, at great cost to themselves and society. Despite the problem of moral hazard, greater treatment seems to offer a more cost effective method for dealing with these abusers than criminal penalties. Our analysis has also underscored that optimal drug policy is likely to differ from one drug to another, since, for example, the impact of government policies—current and hypothetical—may be substantially different for an extremely prevalent drug with relatively mild toxicological effects, such as marijuana, than for a far less common, but more addictive and dangerous drug, such as cocaine.