Could Ending the ‘War on Drugs’ Help Ease Urban Budget Crises?

Despite talk of a nascent economic recovery, the brutal toll exacted on state budgets by the recession continues -- with palpable consequences for transit riders and already lower-income urbanites. Could the cure for cities' fiscal woes be a dramatic shift in drug policy?

A class on dispensary management in Oakland, where drug sales are taxed by the local government. (Photo: SF Chronicle)

Quite possibly, according to an op-ed in today's Washington Post written by two veteran Baltimore police officers, one of whom now teaches at New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Though the revenue-raising potential of decriminalized drug use is not their primary rationale for ending the nation's "war on drugs," the duo argues that legalizing -- and taxing -- drug sales would help fill strained local coffers.

The prospects for broad federal de-escalation of the "war on drugs" are slim, but a significant test of the idea's fiscal potential could come next year, when California voters may decide on a ballot initiative that would expand and tax drug dispensaries. That state's $26 billion budget gap forced a round of painful cuts that hit almost all sectors of city life.

On Capitol Hill, legislation by Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) that would set up a commission to recommend drug policy and criminal justice reforms is slowly gaining momentum, though its potential impact on state budgets would take years to materialize.