The Looming Challenges of Collars for Dollars

            I definitely agree with many of the points in The Economist, and Colorado and Washington seem to as well.  The last six months or so have been a revolutionary step in the ceasing the drug war.   However, legalization is simply the “least bad thing”.  While legalization of all drugs (not just marijuana) can raise major tax revenues, increase the support networks around addicts, and hopefully give more power to developing/”producer countries” over the trade of goods, I think there are some drawbacks The Economist didn’t flesh out fully.  For one, it will be a major challenge in confronting the “collars for dollars” mentality in American, and possibly European, policing.  The Economist mentions that legalization will save money in law enforcement, but does that mean we will have to lay off hundreds/thousands of police officers?  One solution I see is to increase police pay by setting aside a portion of the tax money raised by drug legalization.  That way, police officers are not hit as much by the legal changes and would have incentive to not make petty arrests for the sake of overtime pay.

            In this same vein, Alexander brings up a lot of sometimes shocking evidence of police exploitation of the War on Drugs.  The most overwhelming statistic is “One study found that up to 99 percent of traffic stops made by federally funded narcotics task forces result in no citation and that 98 percent of task-force searches during traffic stops are discretionary searches in which the officer searches the car with the driver’s verbal “consent” but has no other legal authority to do so.” (11)  Our whole law enforcement system is broken beyond repair.  The middle class gives utmost respect to cops, who in turn minimize their arrests of middle class citizens (who use heftier drugs and get away with fraud, etc).  Rather, our cops trying to “make ends meet” (Moskos) have to make unwarranted traffic stops on the inner city poor—major racial profiling going on to boot—in order to collect overtime pay.  What we have on our hands is a systemic failure of which the legalization of drugs may only be a band-aid to the larger class issues of our society.