When choosing between frugality and security, history shows that America almost always selects the latter. To paraphrase President Kennedy, we’ll pay any price and bear any burden to protect ourselves. No doubt this was why the economic case against the Iraq invasion failed. To many, the war debate seemed to pose a binary question: debt or mushroom clouds? And when it’s a scuffle between money arguments and security arguments (even dishonest security arguments), security wins every time. Call this the Pay-Any-Price Principle — an axiom that has impacted all of America’s wars, and now, most poignantly, its War on Drugs. When faced with criticism of budget-busting prosecution and incarceration costs, law enforcement agencies and private prison interests have successfully depicted their cause as a willingness to pay any price to jail dealers of hard narcotics. Of course, data undermine that storyline. In 2008, the FBI reported that 82 percent of drug arrests were for possession — not sales or manufacturing — and almost half of those arrests were for marijuana, not hard drugs. Fortunately, these numbers are seeping into the public consciousness. Gallup’s latest survey shows record support for marijuana legalization, as more Americans see the […]