Fixing California, along with much of the U.S.A.

An interesting article in the L.A. Times talks about the destruction of a former drug house in an L.A. neighborhood. They talked about the amount of crime and violence that had surrounded it and how the neighborhood had become safer. Of course, the crime probably moved about five blocks, but it looks good on a bar chart.

It did get me to thinking about the California state budget crisis. If not completely balanced, the California budget would be much closer if the federal government were today to legalize marijuana and assign to the states the franchise for selling it legally at a moderate profit.

At a stroke, a massive amount of state, county, and local spending would be eliminated. Everybody gets paid in this futile "war on drugs," launched by Richard Nixon with a promise that it would be over in a few years. The snitches get paid, as do the cops, the public defenders, the prosecutors, the judges, and the prison guards, all for preventing the use of a substance less lethal than tobacco or alcohol.

In addition to the money saved, there is the money earned by selling it. The stuff is sold now, but the public sees no revenue. Billions would flow into state treasuries that now go to Mexican drug lords, who hire people to kill Mexican public officials. The feds wouldn't need to keep shipping our cash to Mexico and Colombia to fight the effects of the illegal cash we are shipping there.

While we're at it, we could legalize and tax prostitution. I notice that Eliot Spitzer's pimp in New York may go to jail for two years. At a cost of tens of thousands of dollars to achieve exactly what?

As the great thinker Lysander Spooner wrote in the 19th century, vices are not crimes.