It’s true. I swore off the thought of concentrating in economics after a brief stint in Harvard College’s Economics 10A: “Principles of Microeconomics” last semester—the supply-and-demand graph shifts didn’t spark any Marie Kondo-esque joy. But hey, it’s the Independent’s renowned Weed Issue, so I figured I might as well venture back into the department to speak with an expert acquainted with weed policy.
In this case, that individual is Senior Lecturer Dr. Jeffrey Miron of Harvard’s Economics Department, known for his work with libertarianism—a political ideology that stresses lessening government intervention and valuing individual privacy and freedom (including the right to hit bongs). In his signature class Economics 1017: “A Libertarian Perspective on Economic and Social Policy,” Miron has given thousands of Harvard undergraduates an introduction to libertarianism. As a newbie to economic policy on weed in general, I wanted to hear what questions of mine he could answer. After all, what better way to spend a Thursday afternoon than talking to a Harvard economics faculty member about smoking grass?
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Miron’s general views on drugs follow a similar stance that many sharing the libertarian ideology advocate for. “The libertarian view is that people should be allowed to do whatever they want to their own bodies. They should be able to drink alcohol, [smoke] marijuana, take cocaine, whatever. It’s nobody’s business except the person… it’s not the government’s business,” he said.
That’s not to say marijuana is free of wrongdoing. “Of course, there can be irresponsible uses of marijuana, just as there can be irresponsible uses of alcohol or automobiles or chainsaws or billions of other things,” he added.
In 1937, Congress punished marijuana usage with the Marijuana Tax Act, and four decades later, significantly escalated anti-drug legislation collectively known as the “War on Drugs.” This movement included the adoption of the Controlled Substances Act, per which weed remains criminalized federally.
For marijuana buyers and sellers, Miron elaborated, this effected great change in the weed economy. “The implications of all those [laws] was that it drove the market underground,” he said. “[It] doesn’t seem that it reduced the size of the market very much, and it meant that quality control was going to be worse because it was an underground market where the standard mechanisms and quality don’t operate very well. So all of these negatives that economists predict will arise from forcing a market underground, in fact, happen for marijuana and a bunch of other drugs as well.”
These policies extend beyond cannabis—some states have established lenient policies on some other harder drugs. For instance, in 2021, Oregon implemented a temporary allowance of doses up to 2 grams of meth and 2 grams of cocaine, along with many other drugs. But three years later, Oregon reversed the law after noting overdose rates had not sufficiently decreased.
“There’s no question that the state botched the implementation,” Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler admitted in an interview with the “New York Times.” “And as I say, the timing couldn’t have been worse. In terms of the botched implementation: To decriminalize the use of drugs before you actually had the treatment services in place was obviously a huge mistake.”
At the time, Oregon had been ranked 50th for access to substance abuse treatment by the Associated Press.
Miron offered his thoughts about the Oregon policy’s potential economic implications in the larger substance abuse debate. “My view is that it is exactly what we should have expected, because they did a stupid policy experiment.”
“The reason you get all of these negative things when you force America underground mainly has to do with the supply side—the production and distribution of the prohibited substances,” Miron explained. “They did not legalize the production distribution, so all of the violence, all the quality control problems, all the corruption, was very, very likely going to remain…so we shift the demand for drugs out, meaning you have a bigger black market, which implies you should see more violence, more overdoses, etc.”
However, Miron remained firm in his position on legalizing all drugs. “I think what happened [in Oregon] is completely consistent with [what happened], but it doesn’t mean that legalization doesn’t work. It just means they didn’t do legalization.”
Due to the Controlled Substances Act, the legal state of drugs remains complicated, as federal law still applies to charges of possession and distribution in the state. Instead, Oregon’s attempt to ease drug issues tried to enact penalties on the demand side of the issue, which Miron found problematic. “If you were going to do one side of the market, it actually would have made more sense to utilize the supply side,” he said.
Miron remains unsure regarding the likelihood of federal marijuana legalization. “I think it’s plausible,” he said. “I mean, it’s getting to be sort of a weird situation to have so much of the country in which at the state level marijuana is legal, and yet the federal law is different. But under the current administration, marijuana legalization doesn’t seem to be at the top of their list. Heard anything about [Department of Government Efficacy] trying to get marijuana?”
Any lack of effort to tighten up marijuana laws may track back to the fact that, since 2022, more people smoke weed daily than drink daily in the U.S., a figure Miron was familiar with. “I saw that statement as well, and I was really surprised,” he stated. “That number made me nervous; I am concerned that they weren’t comparing apples to apples.”
With such widespread usage of marijuana on a nationwide basis, it seems the social stigma surrounding the drug has decreased.
“Is it plausible that the stigma has gone down? Sure. But so what? I mean, that’s fine to a libertarian, you could even say there’s potentially some benefit,” Miron said. “While it’s almost certainly a bad idea to drive under the influence of alcohol or marijuana, the evidence we have points to alcohol causing even bigger drunk driving ability. So people shift to marijuana from alcohol that might help reduce traffic accidents… I’m not asserting that, but, [I’m] open to discussion.”
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After that, I let Miron get back to his car ride home. Hanging up the phone, I began thinking about America’s hazy future—after all, the economic issues of weed affect all of us. Though I’m neither a libertarian, a weed enthusiast, nor an economist, talking about drugs with Miron was still one of the most valuable conversations of my week. If you’re leaving this article feeling personally inspired to yap about Bong Hits 4 Jesus, feel free to send him an email to chat. I’ll caution you, however, that you may have to wait a little for his response—it took him, like, a whole four minutes to respond to my email.
Ben Kaufman ’28 (benkaufman@college.harvard.edu) writes News for the Independent.