Despite Billions Spent, America World’s Top Drug User

While a lot of my conservative friends disagree with me, I think the War on Drugs is a waste of money. Over $400 billion dollars since the 1970s. What do we have to show for it?

Americans are world’s top drug users: study

Americans are the world’s top consumers of cannabis and cocaine despite punitive US drug laws, according to an international study published in the online scientific magazine PLoS Medicine.
The study, released Monday, revealed that 16.2 percent of Americans had tried cocaine at least once, and 42.4 percent had used marijuana.

In second-place New Zealand, just 4.3 percent of study participants had used cocaine, and 41.9 percent marijuana.

You want to really control this area? Legalize it. Think that is a bad idea?

Drug use “does not appear to be simply related to drug policy,” the researchers wrote, “since countries with more stringent policies toward illegal drug use did not have lower levels of such drug use than countries with more liberal policies.”

In the Netherlands, where drug policy is more liberal than the United States, 1.9 percent of survey participants said they had used cocaine and 19.8 percent marijuana.

During Prohibition, the mob grew due to liquor sales. Today, we have the Mexican drug lords sending their mercenaries across or border to shoot up homes of American citizens.

It isn’t working.

From the Washington Post:

Prohibition gives narcotics huge added value as a commodity. Once traffickers get around the business risks — getting busted or being shot by competitors — they stand to make vast profits. A confidential strategy report prepared in 2005 for British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s cabinet and later leaked to the media offered one of the most damning indictments of the efficacy of the drug war. Law enforcement agencies seize less than 20 percent of the 700 tons of cocaine and 550 tons of heroin produced annually. According to the report, they would have to seize 60 to 80 percent to make the industry unprofitable for the traffickers.

Not only is it not working, but it is costing us huge amounts for no gain:

Over $19 billion was spent on the war on drugs by the federal government in 2003, according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy. This equates to $600 per second. Of this money, 61% went to criminal justice, and 30% went for treatment and prevention programs (”What Does The Drug War Cost?” New Times, June 24, 1999). Another $30 billion was spent by state and local governments.

According to the Schaffer Library of Drug Policy, it costs approximately $450,000 to put a single drug dealer in jail. This cost includes the costs of arrest, conviction, room, and board.

To put that in perspective, while we spend $19 billion in 2003, more than $400 billion since the 1970s, “The syndicates that control narcotics production and distribution reap the profits from an annual turnover of $400 billion to $500 billion.” All that money, going where?

In the past two years, the drug war has become the Taliban’s most effective recruiter in Afghanistan. Afghanistan’s Muslim extremists have reinvigorated themselves by supporting and taxing the countless peasants who are dependent one way or another on the opium trade, their only reliable source of income. The Taliban is becoming richer and stronger by the day, especially in the east and south of the country. The “War on Drugs” is defeating the “war on terror.”

It’s time to try something different. This “War on Drugs” isn’t working. Even National Review said this, 12 years ago.