October 11, 2010 3:16PM 

# How to Profit by Expanding Freedom 

By [Tim Lynch](https://www.cato.org/people/tim-lynch) 

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That’s the title of [this week’s column by Steve Chapman](http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ct-oped-1010-chapman-20101010,0,5208291.column):

Here’s an excerpt:

> Spending huge sums of money and getting no results to justify the expense: That’s the relentless, and accurate, Republican critique of President Barack Obama’s efforts to revive the U.S. economy. But it also describes a policy staunchly supported by Republicans as well as Democrats decade after decade: the war on drugs …
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> None of the \[data is\] new, but it has fresh relevance because of budgetary pressures that have forced citizens to ask what on earth the drug war is accomplishing. Californians, whose state government is in a bottomless fiscal hole, will vote next month on an initiative to legalize cannabis. One big selling point is that it could yield a $1.4 billion windfall to state coffers.
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> What is true for the Golden State is true for the other 49. In a new study for the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron and research associate Katherine Waldock estimate that, nationally, legalizing and taxing marijuana would save $8.7 billion in enforcement costs and harvest $8.7 billion in revenue.

Read the [whole thing](http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ct-oped-1010-chapman-20101010,0,5208291.column). The Cato study can be found [here](https://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=12169).

##### Related Tags 

[Constitutional Law](https://www.cato.org/constitutional-law), [Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies](https://www.cato.org/robert-levy-center-constitutional-studies) 

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