Even if you don’t support the use of cannabis use in general, that doesn’t mean the current system of dealing with it is cost-effective or moral.
Many would argue that under a prohibitionist system, the costs of policing cannabis use and the disproportionate impact on communities of color far exceed the meager benefits it offers. By legalizing weed, they say, you’ll save money on enforcing what are ultimately unpopular laws and start addressing the shameful racial bias inherent in drug policing.
But how does this stack up to the reality? What can we learn from states where they’ve already legalized cannabis? Do the costs of enforcing cannabis laws actually hurt more than they help, financially and socially?
Continuing our series on the Best Arguments For and Against Legalizing Cannabis, we’re taking an in-depth look at this common pro cannabis argument.
Summary: Do the Costs of Enforcing Laws Against Cannabis Outweigh the Benefits?
Yes…
- Police are 3.6 times more likely to arrest black people than white people for cannabis possession. It’s likely the case for other minorities like Hispanic people too.
- Police arrested over 200,000 people for cannabis possession in 2023. This costs an estimated $1,000 to $2,000 per person. The total cost of these could easily reach $400 million.
- All of this expense and racial bias is not worth the questionable “benefit” of punishing people for using cannabis.
No…
- While legalization does reduce racial disparities in arrests, it doesn’t completely remove them. For example, police officers in California are still 80% more likely to arrest black people for weed.
- Advocates often overstate the financial savings of legalization. The above estimates assume police save money by not making arrests, but staff costs and most other expenses still exist regardless.
- With the benefits so clearly overstated, it is not obvious that the cost of trying to keep a drug off the streets will outweigh them.
The First Problem: The Racial Disparities in Cannabis Arrests
It’s well-known that arrests for cannabis disproportionately affect black people and likely ethnic minorities more generally.
The best source for this is the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) report “A Tale of Two Countries: Racially Targeted Arrests in the Era of Marijuana Reform.” This 2020 report found that police were 3.64 times more likely to arrest black people than white people for cannabis possession. But use rates are similar between races. Even this glosses over the issue in some ways, because the disparity reaches 9.6 times more likely in Montana, and many states far exceed a 3.64-fold disparity.
This is undeniably linked to the criminalization of cannabis. Studies using Universal Crime Reporting Program data find that states which decriminalize or legalize cannabis see a reduction in these disparities. For example, in this study, legalization led to 562 fewer arrests of black adults and 195 fewer arrests of white adults (per 100k population) and decriminalization with 448.6 and 117.1 fewer, respectively.
The picture here is crystal clear. While arrests reduce for both groups, these changes disproportionately benefit black Americans, because drug laws disproportionately harm them. While the Universal Crime Reporting data is generally not good enough to look at other races in this analysis, other evidence suggests that Hispanic people likely suffer from the same prejudice and it’s unlikely that it stops there.
The Second Problem: The Financial Cost of Enforcing Cannabis Law
The other major aspect of this argument is the unnecessary labor and expense that goes into enforcing laws against cannabis. Actually estimating this isn’t as easy as it might seem. However, it’s hard to argue that those resources couldn’t be better spent elsewhere.
Some of the most widely-cited calculations of the financial cost of cannabis prohibition come from Jeffrey A. Miron, including this paper from Miron and Katherine Waldock. This estimates the cost of the federal prohibition on cannabis at $3.4 billion in 2008, similar to a $3.6 billion estimate from the ACLU for 2010. These are old analyses, but they show the scale of savings possible, and were conducted before states started legalizing cannabis.
Data from the FBI’s Crime Data Explorer from 2023 show that there were over 200,000 arrests for cannabis possession in the year. This is also an undercount, because it only includes data from local agencies representing 91% of the US population. There are also some “unspecified” violations not included here that may be related to cannabis.
While it’s difficult to calculate the precise cost based on this, a Drug Policy Alliance report estimated a cost of $1,000 to $2,000 per arrest in 2010. Even using these decade-old figures, it would suggest a cost of $200 to $400 million for the confirmed 2023 arrests. The current figure is almost certainly higher than this, with inflation alone bringing it to between $280 and $560 million.
In comparison to the overall law enforcement budget, this might not seem like a huge amount, but it’s important to remember that the benefit here is minimal. Bear in mind that the report only calculated this figure for possession. This is legal either medically or recreationally in 38 states, and most people recognize that it is not a major concern. On top of this, almost half of states now have legal adult use cannabis, which already reduces the financial and labor cost of enforcement.
Counterpoint: Is That Money Really Saved?
There is one notable issue with these arguments, raised by James Austin, PhD in a JFA Institute paper. Essentially, these estimates all use a proportionate cost model. This means that if 10% of all arrests were for cannabis, then researchers assume that legalization or decriminalization would lead to a 10% reduction in costs.
This is not really how it works. When they legalize cannabis, politicians don’t reduce police budgets proportionally. Likewise, the department still has the same number of officers to pay afterwards. Overall, it’s better to think of the “benefits” as resources that are freed up. They aren’t “savings” in the typical sense of the word.
This is not to say there is no benefit from doing this. Every police officer not spending his or her time arresting someone for cannabis is a police officer probably doing something more useful. But it’s important to be clear that advocates often overstate these savings.
Counterpoint: Racial Disparities in Arrests Will Still Exist
Secondly, although states with legal or decriminalized cannabis tend to have fewer racial disparities in arrests, the disparities still exist. For example, based on the results of the ACLU report, police are still 2.1 times more likely to arrest black people for cannabis possession than white people in Washington, despite legalization. In Oregon and California they are 1.8 times more likely. In Nevada, black people are 3 times more likely to be arrested.
A single change in the law doesn’t completely solve long-standing prejudices. There are always still offenses in a legal system (possession at over the allowed limit, for instance) and enforcement of these still falls disproportionately on communities of color.
Our Take: Even With Limitations, Legalization is an Improvement
Yes, legalizing cannabis won’t completely resolve the racial disparities in arrests. And yes, the savings won’t be as big as many estimates suggest. However, you’d be hard pressed to argue that a reduction in racial disparities is not a good thing. It would also be very short-sighted to only look at financial savings rather than considering the massive benefit of giving police officers time to tackle more serious crime. Legal weed won’t solve all of our problems. But that is a very poor justification for not doing it, especially considering the alternative.
We shouldn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good, especially when the status quo is so awful.
References
Austin, J. (2004). Rethinking the Consequences of Decriminalizing Marijuana. The JFA Institute. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/scans/jfa/marijuana_report.pdf
About the source:
- Peer reviewed? No, a report for the JFA Institute.
- Methodology: A critical review of existing evidence on the impact of decriminalizing cannabis.
- Main results: The report finds that most cost estimates use a proportionate cost model. These likely overstate savings by assuming that decriminalization would lead to budgetary savings proportional to the amount of total arrests involving cannabis. In other words, they assume that if 30% of arrests are for cannabis, decriminalizing would reduce expenditure by 30%.
- Other notes: This is not a very academic source, but offers a good insight into the issues with other evidence. There are small errors in the manuscript, suggesting lax editing.
Edwards, E., Bunting, W., & Garcia, L. (2013). The War on Marijuana in Black and White. American Civil Liberties Union. https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/aclu-thewaronmarijuana-rel2.pdf
About the source:
- Peer reviewed? No, a report from the ACLU.
- Methodology: Used arrest data from the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program, census data for population information, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health for usage rates and Bureau of Justice Statistics data for expenditure data.
- Sample size: Data from 2001 to 2010.
- Main results: Black people were 3.73 times more likely to be arrested for cannabis than white people, despite similar usage rates. States spent over $3.6 billion enforcing laws against cannabis possession.
- Other notes: Latino/Latinas were often classed as “white” in the data, which is a potential source of bias (likely reducing the apparent disparities). In cases where there were multiple offenses, the most serious offense was counted, and so some cannabis offenses were likely missed.
Edwards, E., Greytak, E., Madubuonwu, B., Sanchez, T., Beiers, S., Resing, C., Fernandez, P., & Galai, S. (2020). A Tale of Two Countries: Racially Targeted Arrests in the Era of Marijuana Reform. American Civil Liberties Union. https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/publications/marijuanareport_03232021.pdf
About the source:
- Peer reviewed? No, a non-peer reviewed research report from the ACLU.
- Methodology: Used arrest data from the FBI’s UCR Program for most states, with the exception of New York (from NYC OpenData), Illinois (Freedom of Information Act), Washington D.C. and Florida (neither of whom provided data). They used Census data for population estimates.
- Sample size: Data from 2010 to 2018.
- Main results: On average, black Americans are 3.64 times more likely to be arrested for a cannabis offense than white Americans. This varies by state. While states with legalization or decriminalization tended to have less racial disparity, it was still present.
- Other notes: The UCR program is not perfect. Some agencies don’t report each month and researchers had to obtain the data separately in other cases (e.g. New York). Additionally, the UCR only reports the “highest level” (i.e. worst) offense. This means that it misses some cannabis offenses even when the event was logged. Finally, racial breakdown data is limited so the only possible comparison was black vs. white.
Gunadi, C., & Shi, Y. (2022). Cannabis decriminalization and racial disparity in arrests for cannabis possession. Social Science & Medicine, 293, 114672. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114672
About the source:
- Peer reviewed? Yes, published in Social Science and Medicine.
- Methodology: Used UCR program data to look at cannabis arrests, using census data for population information and noting policy differences between states.
- Sample size: Used data from 2000 to 2019, except for in cases where there was no data for the state in specific years.
- Main results: Both decriminalization and legalization reduced arrest rates, but the racial disparity only decreased among adults (as opposed to youths) after decriminalization.
- Other notes: Much of the reported reduction in disparity came from California. The authors excluded Colorado altogether because the Denver police department misreported data following legalization.
Milner, A. N., George, B. J., & Allison, D. B. (2016). Black and Hispanic Men Perceived to Be Large Are at Increased Risk for Police Frisk, Search, and Force. PLOS ONE, 11(1), Article e0147158. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0147158
About the source:
- Peer reviewed? Yes, published in PLOS ONE.
- Methodology: Used NYPD Stop, Question and Frisk database to obtain details of each stop of adult males, noting the race, height and weight of the individual.
- Sample size: Just under 3.2 million stops that took place between 2006 and 2013.
- Main results: For most height and weight categories, black and Hispanic individuals were more likely to be frisked or searched, compared to white people. This was true even when researchers controlled for the circumstances of the stop.
- Other notes: The study was quite focused, only looking at stops of men in New York, which may mean results are not representative. The authors also note that it is only observational (rather than experimental). This means they can’t conclusively say that race was a relevant factor.
Miron, J., & Waldock, K. (2010). The Budgetary Impact of Ending Drug Prohibition. CATO Institute. https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/DrugProhibitionWP.pdf
About the source:
- Peer reviewed? No, a report from the CATO Institute written by two academics.
- Methodology: Uses UCR data for the proportional number of arrests related to cannabis (and other drugs) in 2007 and the associated budgets to determine the cost savings of legalization.
- Main results: Cannabis prohibition costs $5.4 billion dollars (in 2008) at the state-level and $3.35 billion at the federal level.
- Other notes: This assumes a proportional relationship between expenditure and the percentage of arrests involving the drug, but in practice it doesn’t really work this way.
Sheehan, B. E., Grucza, R. A., & Plunk, A. D. (2021). Association of Racial Disparity of Cannabis Possession Arrests Among Adults and Youths With Statewide Cannabis Decriminalization and Legalization. JAMA Health Forum, 2(10), Article e213435. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamahealthforum.2021.3435
About the source:
- Peer reviewed? Yes, published in JAMA Health Forum.
- Methodology: Used arrest data from the UCR and population data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results program, covering 43 states. 9 states legalized cannabis, 8 decriminalized and 26 had no policy change.
- Sample size: Data from January 2000 to December 2019.
- Main results: Per 100k population, legalization decreased arrests by 561 and 195 for black and white adults, respectively, and decriminalization decreased arrests by 448.6 and 117.1. For youths, arrest rates decreased by 131.1 and 131.2 for legalization and 156.1 and 124.7 for decriminalization, for black and white youth, respectively.
- Other notes: The study used the UCR data for arrests, and therefore has the same issues with incomplete reporting and the inability to check results for other races.