The prohibitionist curse.

• Author: Welch, Matt
• Position: From the Top - Legalizing marijuana

Success softened drug warriors' arguments. Now failure has exposed them.

ECONOMISTS specializing in international development have identified what they call the "resource curse": Contrary to expectations, an abundance of lucrative natural resources is often associated with poor economic performance. Although you'd think that sitting on trillions of gallons of oil would make your country richer, overreliance on a single sector tends to blunt development in others while inviting both corruption and laziness from those who control the taps. If a ruling class can safely siphon off profits from a guaranteed moneymaker, what incentive is there to liberalize or otherwise ignite broad-based prosperity?

Resource-free countries such as Japan, Switzerland, and Singapore get rich by relying on trade and brain work instead of brute extraction, while resource-swollen countries such as Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Venezuela remain poor, corrupt, and illiberal. Having a built-in advantage can become a hindrance if, to paraphrase Jim Hightower's crack about George H.W. Bush at the 1988 Democratic National Convention, you're born on third base thinking you hit a triple. Those who have to hustle for their supper tend to be more industrious and creative; those who don't will coast for as long as they can get away with it.

There are exceptions to this tendency. The United States, Canada, and Australia haven't let natural resources prevent them from getting rich. Nor have Cambodia and Bangladesh benefited noticeably from their comparative dearth. But as the decline of newspaper companies, the humbling of sports dynasties, and the demise of onetime monopolies such as Kodak illustrate, success can mask deep flaws and smother any urgency to fix them. When the conditions fueling success change quickly--when technology creates a better delivery system for a popular activity, or when the price of oil plummets--the battered incumbents can suddenly look ridiculous, anachronistic, and bankrupt.

The same goes for political commentators, as the opening of recreational marijuana stores in Colorado last January laid bare for all to see. The dead-enders still clamoring for prohibition in a country quickly leaving them behind demonstrated the intellectual rot caused by being on the winning side too long.

On January 3, two days after Colorado's state-licensed pot shops opened their doors, New York Times columnist and "national greatness" authoritarian David Brooks published a...