Drug legalization could reduce government costs and raise tax
revenues, but opponents worry over health and social ills State
governments facing massive fiscal deficits might consider a
rather unusual way to alleviate those debts – through the
legalization of drugs like marijuana and thereby ending the
costly drug war. In a study for the Cato Institute, Jeffrey A.
Miron, senior lecturer on economics at Harvard University and a
senior fellow at Cato, and Katherine Waldock, professor of
economics at New York University, estimate that legalizing drugs
would save the government approximately $41.3 billion annually
on expenditures related to the enforcement of prohibition. Of
those savings, $25.7 billion would accrue to state and local
governments, while $15.6 billion would accrue to the federal
government. Miron and Waldock estimate that of that $41.3
billion in savings, about $8.7 billion would result from the
legalization of marijuana alone and $32.6 billion from the
legalization of other drugs, like cocaine an