Published in the Western Standard, December 20, 2004, p. 23. (Also available in a pdf scan.)

 

Drug Use in the Workplace
by
Pierre Lemieux

 

CEOs fear reefer madness: Decriminalization viewed as peril to workplace,” ran the headline on the first page of the National Post. The story was about opinions expressed by David Stewart-Patterson, executive vice-president of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives. “Canada’s largest and most influential business group,” explained the reporter, “warns that a federal bill to decriminalize marijuana could harm the economy.” A New Zealand public health study apparently “concluded that cannabis use actually increased [workers’] fatigue and the chances that they would make errors in judgment and get involved in an accident.” It is difficult to know exactly what Stewart-Patterson said, because he is seldom quoted directly. But assuming he said anything close to what the story reports, he must have been totally stoned, or else he urgently needs to enrol in Economics 101. Expressions like “harming the economy” and “impairing the economy” have no meaning in economics and, for that matter, in any individualistic, rational-choice approach to understanding the social world. The economy is simply the result of all individual choices, the configuration of their consequences. Individuals can be harmed, but saying that “the economy is harmed” adds nothing to this observation, ignores the fact that some (competitors, for example) may benefit from others’ harm, and personalizes society in a pre-scientific fashion—as if three centuries of economic analysis were erased. It is true that economic efficiency, as opposed to “the economy,” suffers from some (in fact, most) public policies, but this only means that some individuals are forbidden to make their own bargains in their own interests according to their own preferences. Saying that the economy is harmed is usually a concealed way for somebody to defend his own interests while draping himself in the mantle of the social do-gooder. Pot consumers and producers are individuals too. The CCCE proposal that “Ottawa conduct a major study of how marijuana affects job performance” (again, the reporter was not quoting directly Patterson-Stewart) is ludicrous. First, Ottawa already wastes enough money “studying” tobacco and other social-engineering projects. Secondly, it is precisely the business of businesses to pay good employees better wages than bad employees. Is the CCCE telling us that their multinational-company members cannot run their businesses without bureaucrats doing studies for them? Back to Economics 101. Markets compute better than bureaucrats (as the fall of communism has proven). Assume that marijuana smokers are less productive employees than, say, those who, in their leisure time, drink beer and eat chips. One would expect the less productive pot smokers to earn lower wages than other workers. If they can’t be identified (after all, they don’t smoke joints on the job—hell, they can’t even smoke tobacco!), or if collective agreements prevent differential treatments, the general level of wages would go down compared to what they would otherwise have been. The reason is simple: if labour productivity decreases, the demand for labour services will be lower, bidding wages down. No need for a federal study there. And if the CCCE thinks that the economy is not flexible enough because of trade union power or state regulation, they should wage their attacks on this front, instead of worrying about what people do with their lives. What markets do is reconcile efficiently different individual preferences—from different consumers, different workers, different investors, and so forth. These preferences include those of pot smokers, and there is no reason for the state to discriminate against them. One would think that the CCCE, which is deep into the fad of “corporate social responsibility,” would argue for all individuals to be free to express their nonviolent preferences on the market. Or perhaps, indeed, “corporate social responsibility” has nothing to do with freedom of choice. The CCCE also raises the objection of delays at the border, as American customs cops would be dead scared of some pot crossing into the land of the free. In other words, since the state that rules on the land of the free wages a war on its pot-smoking subjects, our own state should do the same against its own subjects. Memo to CEOs: (1) Stop being so hopelessly naive. (2) Other individuals will defend your property rights only if you leave them alone when they want to satisfy their own preferences.