A winning healthcare solution

At a time when our president and Congress are commendably attempting to find a way for every American to be adequately covered by health insurance, we should seriously consider paying for it by legalizing and taxing victimless crimes.

In this enlightened and tolerant age, our government nevertheless punishes and incarcerates millions of citizens for consensual or victimless crimes.

{mosads}Why?

Why should anyone be jailed if he or she hasn’t harmed the person or property of another individual? Doing so, as the New Orleans Times-Picayune commented, “violate[s] the very premise upon which America was founded.”

If our current system eliminated or dramatically reduced drug use, gambling or prostitution, it might — might — be worth the massive sums expended. But it hasn’t! We keep burying our heads in the ground and spend ever larger amounts, hiring more enforcement personnel, building more prisons and sending dollars, military equipment and personnel to other countries like Colombia, Mexico and Afghanistan in an endless attempt to have them cut their production and supply of drugs.

More than one-third of those incarcerated in America are there for consensual crimes. We jail ever more people, mostly young and poor, without making any progress in eradicating these objectionable but hardly dangerous offenses.

This is totally futile, and its time for a more constructive plan. Why not legalize all victimless crimes and use the prodigious savings and taxes generated to finance health insurance coverage for every American?

I’ve never come across anyone who wanted to buy drugs, or who wanted to place a bet, or who sought to pay for sex with a prostitute, who couldn’t readily accomplish that goal.

Since these consensual crimes are so prevalent and cannot be eradicated, the only thing achieved by criminalizing them has been to create an incentive for organized crime. We experienced this during Prohibition. By banning consensual activities, we enrich organized criminals. They generate immense profits from prostitution, gambling and drugs.

Men young and old go to prostitutes. They always have and always will. Wouldn’t it be best for prostitution to be legalized, for prostitutes to get regular health checkups and for income from their trade to be taxed for the benefit of the rest of society?

Some argue that prostitution is not a victimless crime because the women are being victimized. But many of these women are already victimized by pimps and Mafiosi, and even enslaved after being tricked into coming to America. If prostitution were legalized, the women could be protected.

Anyone who wants to place a bet can easily do so, so why not legalize gambling, take that income away from organized crime and collect tax revenue on it? Gambling is already widely accepted. Almost every state has a lottery (to fund such worthy goals as education and infrastructure projects) and betting on horse racing. It is outrageously hypocritical to have laws that suggest other forms of gambling are immoral. Those who buy lottery tickets are also generally the least able to afford the cost. In contrast, those who gamble on sports events or wager on other games of chance are generally those who can afford the losses.

As for drugs, despite well-intentioned efforts, we have had no more success — and arguably far less — than we did with alcohol prohibition. Just as with Prohibition, the criminalization of drug use and supply increases violence. International cartels from Mexico, Colombia and Afghanistan kill, kidnap and torture to protect their lucrative endeavors. They seduce young men with money, cars, houses and girls to carry out their horrendous actions. In addition, these drug lords use their immense resources to corrupt the law officers and border guards with irresistible mountains of cash and personal favors.

Peter McWilliams points out in his brilliant book, Ain’t Nobody’s Business If You Do, one of our society’s true heroes, the honest cop, is an endangered species.

Because of the tremendous cost of producing and delivering drugs while evading the law, the price of these illicit substances is very high, and many of those who want or need it turn to crime to pay for their habits.

When I was a youngster, home break-ins were rare when occupants were at home. But over time, as the number of people desperate to satisfy their drug addiction has increased, more homes are being invaded and robbed, and their occupants attacked.

When FDR finally ended Prohibition, he said, “Our tax burden would not be so heavy nor the forms of it so objectionable, if some reasonable proportion of the unaccountable millions now paid to those whose business had been reared upon this stupendous blunder could be made available to our government.”

Drug prohibition is far more costly in every way than alcohol prohibition ever was in terms of enforcement, violent crime, incarceration and the destruction of human reputations and lives.

Many scientists say alcohol and cigarettes, both of which are legally sold, are far more harmful than illegal drugs. Twenty-six thousand Americans die from cigarette smoking every year. A Zogby poll found that 52 percent of voters support treating marijuana as a legal, taxed, regulated substance. Furthermore, 44 percent of teenagers think cocaine is cool and 66 percent say it’s readily available. Let’s get real. Even the elected presidents of our country have confessed to experimenting with various drugs, including our most recent presidents, Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

If our government ended the war on drugs and legalized gambling and prostitution, we as a nation could realize enormous benefits without suffering any negative consequences. What mature adults choose to do without hurting anyone else — though we may deem their behavior undesirable, displeasing or even sinful — need not, should not, be a crime. (We should, however, severely punish anyone who provides unauthorized or harmful drugs to anyone at elementary or high school or perhaps even anyone below the age of 21.)

Obama has been a crusader for change. Legalizing victimless crimes is the kind of change that would end a terrible economic waste and a futile endeavor. It would bring prodigious cost savings and considerable tax revenues..

Plus, prosecuting victimless crimes ties up our courts and prisons and prevents us from dealing with the real crimes. Why continue to arrest 4 million of our fellow citizens every year and continue to incarcerate 750,000 of them for crimes that are not really crimes? Sadly, we have 5 percent of the world’s population but 25 percent of its incarcerated prisoners.

A small but typical example of the benefit of legalizing victimless crime was captured in the declaration of Gov. Jack Markell of Delaware that legalizing sports betting would “help pay for our core government services like our teachers and police, and will also create new jobs in our state.”

Congress is reluctant to enact a bill that would help provide (almost) universal healthcare coverage because it would cost as much as $1 trillion over 10 years. According to McWilliams, the true cost of enforcing victimless crimes in America is $450 billion per year. Brian Wright, an incisive reviewer of McWilliams’s work, notes, “[W]hen you add the destruction of human lives, the cost is easily three or four times that number.” And since this estimate was made back in 1996, it is likely significantly higher today.

But even if we are extremely conservative and cut estimated savings in half, it would still be $225 billion a year, or $2.25 trillion over 10 years. That is more than twice what Congress estimates we need for the healthcare bill and which is stalling critical legislation. And McWilliams’s estimates do not even include the taxes that would be collected or the large number of legitimate jobs that might be created.

Shouldn’t we convert the failure of the criminalization of victimless acts to the success of an efficiently funded healthcare program? Best of all, we can achieve this without raising anyone’s taxes or bankrupting the country.

Davis, a shareholder in The Hill’s parent company, is an economist, an MBA graduate (with distinction) from Harvard Business School and author of From Hard Knocks to Hot Stocks
(William Morrow and Co.) and Making America Work Again (Crown). His e-mail address is
alison@dhblair.com.