Economista De Harvard: Cinco Motivos Para Legalizar A Maconha

[CanhamoMAN]

Economista de Harvard: cinco motivos para legalizar a maconha

Entre as razões apontadas por Jeffrey Miron no documentário “HIGH: The True Tale of American Marijuana”, está a provável redução de déficit governamental

05/03/2009

Fonte:Epoca Negocios

Tornar o uso da maconha legal poderia ser uma maneira de reduzir o saldo negativo na balança de pagamentos de governos mundiais. A opinião é de Jeffrey Miron, economista da Harvard University - uma das universidades mais respeitadas do mundo -, que no documentário “HIGH: The True Tale of American Marijuana”, cita cinco motivos pelos quais o uso da erva não deveria mais ser considerado crime.

De acordo com o professor, que estuda o assunto há quinze anos, a redução do déficit governamental aconteceria por duas razões. Os impostos que poderiam ser cobrados sobre as drogas legalizadas teriam capacidade de arrecadar bilhões de dólares por ano. Além disto, os gastos com processos e prisões por crimes relacionados ao consumo ilegal e tráfico iriam reduzir.

A própria criminalidade diminuiria, acredita o professor. Isto porque questões entre os próprios traficantes que atualmente não podem ser resolvidas pela justiça - já que o mercado é ilegal - acabam sendo resolvidas de forma violenta. A redução de crimes gerados indiretamente pela ilegalidade também aconteceria. Com preços controlados e menores em um mercado legalizado, ele acredita que roubo e prostituição cairiam, já que às vezes este tipo de delito acontece para financiar o vício.

A menor demanda por armas, a redução de pessoas infectadas pelo vírus da Aids, e um maior respeito às leis, que estaria mais permissiva, também são colocados pelo professor como pontos positivos para a legalização da maconha pelo mundo.

[Fisherman]

Rapaz esse professor ai ta otimista em relacao a legalizacao em...so falto dize que com as sementes do canhamo acabariamos com a fome...

Mas sem brincadeiras,acredito que esse processo todo que ele falou nao ocoreria por conta da legalizacao apenas,muito menos da legalizacao apenas da maconha...Talvez o fator financeiro.

Abracos

Mr.Fisherman

[Canadense]

2010, o mundo se tornará civilizado...

[Copyleft]

Fora que no Brasil a tributação incide majoritariamente sobre o consumo, os países mais ricos concentram a maior parte de sua cobrança sobre o patrimônio e a renda., no Brasil tem familias ricas que ficam sem trabalhar por várias gerações, no Japão se meus filhos nào trabalharem provavelmente meus netos nào seriam mais ricos...

No Brasil é 35% do PIB a carga tributária de acordo com o ultimo estudo da Receita Federal, o ideal seria 15% do PIB dentro de 15 a 20 anos, isso se da porque o Brasil optou em ser um estado assistencialista, com direitos muito evidentes para toda a população, criando a partir daí uma política capaz de dar conta desses gastos públicos através do aumento da tributação.

E quem paga mais são os mais pobres, mesmo sendo induzido a achar que nào paga imposto por causa das inumeras isenções no Brasil.

O senador Francisco Dornelles (PP-RJ) tem um proposta bem positiva a esse respeito, apresentada em março de 2008 e bem vista por especialistas, ou seja o que se aplica lá (de acordo com o cara de Harvard) não rola no Brasil...

[Avalokiteshvara]

A própria criminalidade diminuiria, acredita o professor. Isto porque questões entre os próprios traficantes que atualmente não podem ser resolvidas pela justiça - já que o mercado é ilegal - acabam sendo resolvidas de forma violenta. A redução de crimes gerados indiretamente pela ilegalidade também aconteceria. Com preços controlados e menores em um mercado legalizado, ele acredita que roubo e prostituição cairiam, já que às vezes este tipo de delito acontece para financiar o vício.

A menor demanda por armas, a redução de pessoas infectadas pelo vírus da Aids, e um maior respeito às leis, que estaria mais permissiva, também são colocados pelo professor como pontos positivos para a legalização da maconha pelo mundo.

Se o cara está falando exclusivamente de maconha ele viajou legal aí... primeiro, queria saber, quais questoes sao essas entre os traficantes? O texto nao diz...

Mas quando o cara fala vicio, bem, prostituicao e roubo sao crimes associados os uso cronico de crack e de cocaina, mao de maconha. Entao, pra mim, o cara viajou legal.

E, depois, qual a relacao entre incidencia de casos de AIDS e uso de maconha???? Há um uso medicinal, é a relacao que conheco, mas dizer que menos pessoas seroa infectadas.... ué, maconha de injeta agora? Entao o cara viajou, isso aí é uma vantagem da reducao de danos, com programas de troca de seringas para usuarios de opiacios.... no Brasil, ocorre mais a troca de cachimbo, para usuarios de crack, mas ha de seringas tambem...

Outros pontos: uma lei, por ser "permissiva", nao sera mais ou menos respeitada. E essa de menor demanda por armas, bem, pode cair um pouco, mas o que financia a guerra pesada, de compra de armas pesadas, eh a cocaína... entao acho que esse economista ou esta viajando ou estava falando de drogas em geral e a reportagem editou mal....

ps.: as criticas sao para a reportagem e nao ao topico, ok?

[Scrollock]

Tb acho q o cara viajou... mas tb penso que talvez ele esteja tentando convercer os proibicionistas e não quem já é a favor da legalização... e proibicionista acha que maconheiro, xerador e "pedreiro" é tudo igual, e que ambos cometem crimes pra financiar o vício... quem é contra a legalização realmente acha isso...

então, talvez não seja a maneira mais correta, mas se fizer alguns proibicionistas acharem que isso não vai mais acontecer com a maconha já tah bom, mesmo q não esteja acontecendo... n sei se entenderam minha viajem...heheheh

Sobre a AIDS o cara viajou ^^

Mas acho q ele fez um discurso pra convencer quem é contra, fazer o que se esses são ignorantes...

Eu tenho muita esperança na legalização da maconha e da coca, NÃO COCAÍNA... tipo, substituir essa cultura de cheirar cocaína pela de mascar folhas de coca...

Enquanto nada acontece, continuamos fazendo nossa parte

floww

[Serth]

O grande problema é que eles estão proibindo uma planta!!! UMA PLANTA!! que converte o CO2 (isso sim deveria ser proibido!!!!!!!). Mas tudo que vejo é a base da exploração de petróleo aumentando! E o rio corre pro mar... e o mar dessa merda toda é o dinheiro! Na minha universidade é muito complicado se o cara quiser ir pro setor ambiental num curso que quase 100% dos estudantes vão sair pra trabalhar com exploração/prospecção de petróleo!!

Enquanto essa NOSSA(e de todos os seres do planeta) planta estiver com grandes valores de $$ em cima o mercado vai querer não liberar, o petróleo gera muito dinheiro.. mas é muito mesmo!

Mas ele que deveria ser proíbido! E não uma planta que pode ajudar no equilibrío de CO2 do planeta!

porra malz.. to muito doido aqui

dá até vontade de chorar ou gritar ou sei lá

[Mactak]

E a revista The Economist também mandou essa:

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaySt...e=hptextfeature

How to stop the drug wars

Mar 5th 2009

From The Economist print edition

Prohibition has failed; legalisation is the least bad solution

A HUNDRED years ago a group of foreign diplomats gathered in Shanghai for the first-ever international effort to ban trade in a narcotic drug. On February 26th 1909 they agreed to set up the International Opium Commission—just a few decades after Britain had fought a war with China to assert its right to peddle the stuff. Many other bans of mood-altering drugs have followed. In 1998 the UN General Assembly committed member countries to achieving a “drug-free world” and to “eliminating or significantly reducing” the production of opium, cocaine and cannabis by 2008.

That is the kind of promise politicians love to make. It assuages the sense of moral panic that has been the handmaiden of prohibition for a century. It is intended to reassure the parents of teenagers across the world. Yet it is a hugely irresponsible promise, because it cannot be fulfilled.

Next week ministers from around the world gather in Vienna to set international drug policy for the next decade. Like first-world-war generals, many will claim that all that is needed is more of the same. In fact the war on drugs has been a disaster, creating failed states in the developing world even as addiction has flourished in the rich world. By any sensible measure, this 100-year struggle has been illiberal, murderous and pointless. That is why The Economist continues to believe that the least bad policy is to legalise drugs.

“Least bad” does not mean good. Legalisation, though clearly better for producer countries, would bring (different) risks to consumer countries. As we outline below, many vulnerable drug-takers would suffer. But in our view, more would gain.

The evidence of failure

Nowadays the UN Office on Drugs and Crime no longer talks about a drug-free world. Its boast is that the drug market has “stabilised”, meaning that more than 200m people, or almost 5% of the world’s adult population, still take illegal drugs—roughly the same proportion as a decade ago. (Like most purported drug facts, this one is just an educated guess: evidential rigour is another casualty of illegality.) The production of cocaine and opium is probably about the same as it was a decade ago; that of cannabis is higher. Consumption of cocaine has declined gradually in the United States from its peak in the early 1980s, but the path is uneven (it remains higher than in the mid-1990s), and it is rising in many places, including Europe.

This is not for want of effort. The United States alone spends some $40 billion each year on trying to eliminate the supply of drugs. It arrests 1.5m of its citizens each year for drug offences, locking up half a million of them; tougher drug laws are the main reason why one in five black American men spend some time behind bars. In the developing world blood is being shed at an astonishing rate. In Mexico more than 800 policemen and soldiers have been killed since December 2006 (and the annual overall death toll is running at over 6,000). This week yet another leader of a troubled drug-ridden country—Guinea Bissau—was assassinated.

Yet prohibition itself vitiates the efforts of the drug warriors. The price of an illegal substance is determined more by the cost of distribution than of production. Take cocaine: the mark-up between coca field and consumer is more than a hundredfold. Even if dumping weedkiller on the crops of peasant farmers quadruples the local price of coca leaves, this tends to have little impact on the street price, which is set mainly by the risk of getting cocaine into Europe or the United States.

Nowadays the drug warriors claim to seize close to half of all the cocaine that is produced. The street price in the United States does seem to have risen, and the purity seems to have fallen, over the past year. But it is not clear that drug demand drops when prices rise. On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence that the drug business quickly adapts to market disruption. At best, effective repression merely forces it to shift production sites. Thus opium has moved from Turkey and Thailand to Myanmar and southern Afghanistan, where it undermines the West’s efforts to defeat the Taliban.

Al Capone, but on a global scale

Indeed, far from reducing crime, prohibition has fostered gangsterism on a scale that the world has never seen before. According to the UN’s perhaps inflated estimate, the illegal drug industry is worth some $320 billion a year. In the West it makes criminals of otherwise law-abiding citizens (the current American president could easily have ended up in prison for his youthful experiments with “blow”). It also makes drugs more dangerous: addicts buy heavily adulterated cocaine and heroin; many use dirty needles to inject themselves, spreading HIV; the wretches who succumb to “crack” or “meth” are outside the law, with only their pushers to “treat” them. But it is countries in the emerging world that pay most of the price. Even a relatively developed democracy such as Mexico now finds itself in a life-or-death struggle against gangsters. American officials, including a former drug tsar, have publicly worried about having a “narco state” as their neighbour.

The failure of the drug war has led a few of its braver generals, especially from Europe and Latin America, to suggest shifting the focus from locking up people to public health and “harm reduction” (such as encouraging addicts to use clean needles). This approach would put more emphasis on public education and the treatment of addicts, and less on the harassment of peasants who grow coca and the punishment of consumers of “soft” drugs for personal use. That would be a step in the right direction. But it is unlikely to be adequately funded, and it does nothing to take organised crime out of the picture.

Legalisation would not only drive away the gangsters; it would transform drugs from a law-and-order problem into a public-health problem, which is how they ought to be treated. Governments would tax and regulate the drug trade, and use the funds raised (and the billions saved on law-enforcement) to educate the public about the risks of drug-taking and to treat addiction. The sale of drugs to minors should remain banned. Different drugs would command different levels of taxation and regulation. This system would be fiddly and imperfect, requiring constant monitoring and hard-to-measure trade-offs. Post-tax prices should be set at a level that would strike a balance between damping down use on the one hand, and discouraging a black market and the desperate acts of theft and prostitution to which addicts now resort to feed their habits.

Selling even this flawed system to people in producer countries, where organised crime is the central political issue, is fairly easy. The tough part comes in the consumer countries, where addiction is the main political battle. Plenty of American parents might accept that legalisation would be the right answer for the people of Latin America, Asia and Africa; they might even see its usefulness in the fight against terrorism. But their immediate fear would be for their own children.

That fear is based in large part on the presumption that more people would take drugs under a legal regime. That presumption may be wrong. There is no correlation between the harshness of drug laws and the incidence of drug-taking: citizens living under tough regimes (notably America but also Britain) take more drugs, not fewer. Embarrassed drug warriors blame this on alleged cultural differences, but even in fairly similar countries tough rules make little difference to the number of addicts: harsh Sweden and more liberal Norway have precisely the same addiction rates. Legalisation might reduce both supply (pushers by definition push) and demand (part of that dangerous thrill would go). Nobody knows for certain. But it is hard to argue that sales of any product that is made cheaper, safer and more widely available would fall. Any honest proponent of legalisation would be wise to assume that drug-taking as a whole would rise.

There are two main reasons for arguing that prohibition should be scrapped all the same. The first is one of liberal principle. Although some illegal drugs are extremely dangerous to some people, most are not especially harmful. (Tobacco is more addictive than virtually all of them.) Most consumers of illegal drugs, including cocaine and even heroin, take them only occasionally. They do so because they derive enjoyment from them (as they do from whisky or a Marlboro Light). It is not the state’s job to stop them from doing so.

What about addiction? That is partly covered by this first argument, as the harm involved is primarily visited upon the user. But addiction can also inflict misery on the families and especially the children of any addict, and involves wider social costs. That is why discouraging and treating addiction should be the priority for drug policy. Hence the second argument: legalisation offers the opportunity to deal with addiction properly.

By providing honest information about the health risks of different drugs, and pricing them accordingly, governments could steer consumers towards the least harmful ones. Prohibition has failed to prevent the proliferation of designer drugs, dreamed up in laboratories. Legalisation might encourage legitimate drug companies to try to improve the stuff that people take. The resources gained from tax and saved on repression would allow governments to guarantee treatment to addicts—a way of making legalisation more politically palatable. The success of developed countries in stopping people smoking tobacco, which is similarly subject to tax and regulation, provides grounds for hope.

A calculated gamble, or another century of failure?

This newspaper first argued for legalisation 20 years ago (see article). Reviewing the evidence again (see article), prohibition seems even more harmful, especially for the poor and weak of the world. Legalisation would not drive gangsters completely out of drugs; as with alcohol and cigarettes, there would be taxes to avoid and rules to subvert. Nor would it automatically cure failed states like Afghanistan. Our solution is a messy one; but a century of manifest failure argues for trying it.

Se alguém já postou essa matéria podem ficar a vontade para apagar.

[Scrollock]

Achei o documentário no You tube, aqui tah a Parte 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sa1iEhqOA0