LF: War On Drugs Continues To Be A Costly Failure

Public views and attitudes continue to shift concerning the cost of America's decades-long war on drugs. The program has garnered a great deal of criticism over the years because funding for law enforcement is often based on the number of arrests made and the amount of property seized. This means the easiest way for local police to up their numbers and boost their careers is to target low-level drug offenders. To achieve this police have been accused of routinely relying on untrustworthy informants, conducting dangerous home invasions on flimsy evidence, framing suspects, and committing perjury. As the war on drugs continues each year more people have become addicted to drugs and the overdose rate continues to increase. Ironically much of this stems from an opioid epidemic fostered upon us by the big pharmaceutical companies and the very doctors we trusted to care for our health.

How much does the war on drugs cost? Enforcing the war on drugs costs the US more than $51 billion each year, according to the Drug Policy Alliance. As of 2012, the US had spent $1 trillion on anti-drug efforts. In 2016 there were 1,572,579 arrests in the U.S. for drug law violations:

1. Decriminalized the possession of less than an ounce of marijuana and add a full program to treat addicts.

2. Remove mandatory minimum sentencing and “three strikes you’re out” laws.

3. Don’t rely on controlling drug imports from foreign countries. It doesn’t work and is responsible for a terrible escalation in drug-related violence, corruption and gross violations of human rights in a growing number of Latin American countries.

4. Experiment with legal regulation of drugs and thus take away the power of organized crime.

America Puts Way Too Many People In Prison

A 2008 study by Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron has estimated that legalizing drugs would benefit taxpayers $76.8 billion a year in the United States — $44.1 billion from law enforcement savings, and at least $32.7 billion in tax revenue ($6.7 billion from marijuana, $22.5 billion from cocaine and heroin, remainder from other drugs). It is true that many law enforcement lobby groups don’t want to end America’s war against drugs which has cost $1 trillion and counting, but that’s because they’re the reason it’s so expensive. In 2010, a full two-thirds of federal spending on the drug war, $10 billion, went toward law enforcement and interdiction.

Law enforcement rank and file know the truth about the drug war’s profligate and ineffective spending, since marijuana prohibition drives the drug war, these huge costs would end when federal cannabis law changes. Currently, the lawyers, law enforcement officers, and prison systems are the biggest beneficiaries of these laws. Sheriff Tom Allman in Mendocino County, Calif., helped permit, inspect, and protect local cannabis farmers in 2010 and 2011. When asked why, he said: “This county has problems: domestic violence, meth, poverty. Marijuana isn’t even in the top ten. I want it off the front pages so I can deal with the real issues.” All this tends to feed back into the idea that laws that are considered unfair and unevenly enforced weaken trust and faith in our legal system.

With much of the drug war centering around marijuana it has been a slap in the face of the American taxpayers that have spent a fortune on what many see as a misdirected program. The drug war has resulted in trillions of dollars being wasted and misallocated. The governments spending on this program also has devastating human costs that far outweigh the damage caused by drugs alone. Ironically drug prohibition essentially provides a monopoly and price supports for organized crime. By forcibly limiting the supply of drugs while demand remains relatively constant we have increased the profitability of drug trafficking. America needs to end wasteful government spending on the drug war and have the much needed national dialogue about ending prohibition and refocusing resources on health-centered approaches to drug use.

As for adult use and how it might change if marijuana laws are relaxed, the numbers are mixed. A 2011 University of California at Berkeley study, for example, showed a slight increase in adult use with legalization in the Netherlands, though the rate was still lower than in the United States. When the United States’ 40-year-long war on marijuana ends, the country and society are not expected to radically change, but we will see a great deal of drug cartel profits move from the criminal economy to the taxable economy. I'm not advocating marijuana and other drugs become totally unregulated only that a more realistic mature attitude towards them be adopted. Some of the taxes from drug sales should be used to educate people on how not to abuse drugs and the dangers of addiction. It is time we grow up and end this costly war that damages so many young lives.

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Footnote; Below is a post that delves into how the 1930s propaganda film "Reefer Madness" greatly influenced a whole generation and the laws towards marijuana.

http://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2013/12/reefer-madness.html

By the way, the real federal ONDCP budget is $27 billion -- $12.1 billion for treatment and prevention efforts, and $15.6 billion for law enforcement, interdiction, and international initiatives. You want to get rid of ONDCP? No more treatment and prevention?

"Data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) indicate that the overall rate of current drug use among Americans 12 and older has been increasing gradually over the past 13 years, from 8.3 percent in 2002 to 10.1 percent in 2015—an increase of 22 percent. This increase is driven by an increase in marijuana use, rising from 6.2 percent in 2002 to 8.3 percent in 2014—an increase of 34 percent.

All of the pain and suffering of so many prisoners could be ended, if they would stop smoking and selling marijuana.

There's the simple solution: stop using marijuana. That's the easiest way to avoid all of the rest of the pain and expense.

Nobody - not even the hardest drug gangs - forces anybody to smoke pot. Nobody needs pot to live.

There is a tremendous amount of suffering from the war on pot, but pot use is not like, say, sex. Sex is a natural drive built into each creature, and every human being back to the first humans. For human survival and happiness even that completely natural and normal force has to be channeled.

But smoking anything, anything at all? That's not natural. That's not normal. That's not inherited. It's a purely learned behavior, an option, a choice. All people over a certain age pine for sex. Only addicts pine for pot.

Which means that pot is not a need, it's a choice. Which means that people can stop doing it. If they were to, all of the problems of smuggling and distribution, and incarceration, would end.

So, let's end all of this incarceration and suffering over pot. Stop being stubborn jackasses about it and stop smoking pot. Simple, straightforward and sure.

There's an ongoing coup against the President by the Left and Globalists One-Worlders. They are the same subversive Alinsky-ites have hijacked the most of the judiciary and control the powerful (and secret) intel agencies in the world. People who have been trying to expose them have been getting threatened, blackmailed, extorted and...murdered.

How again is weed and arrests of pot-heads more than .0000001% of concern for those of us who see the US Constitution on fire and leftist-Fascists close to controlling this gummint??

As a heart attack. The explanation was that everyone who wants to do drugs is already doing them and is not deterred by the law. Their "proof" is the question to non-users, "If drugs were legal would you do them?"

How much does the war on drugs cost? Enforcing the war on drugs costs the US more than $51 billion each year, according to the Drug Policy Alliance. As of 2012, the US had spent $1 trillion on anti-drug efforts. In 2016 there were 1,572,579 arrests in the U.S. for drug law violations: