The War on Drugs

According to the AP:

After 40 years, the United States' war on drugs has cost $1 trillion and hundreds of thousands of lives, and for what? Drug use is rampant and violence even more brutal and widespread.

The statistics are staggering: 22,700 dead at our southern border in the last three years, all due to the drug war.

So here's your "war on drugs" in action. In raiding the home of a suspected marijuana drug dealer, Missouri SWAT shot two family dogs (killing one) and likely traumatized a seven year-old boy. What did they find? A little marijuana residue inside a pipe.



Clearly the war on drugs is a colossal failure. We could have gotten much better results by simply decriminalized drug possession for personal use and focusing instead on education and prevention. We learned a tough lesson in the 1920's: Prohibition does not work. How did we end Al Capone et al.'s reign of terror? The US repealed the 18th amendment. Maybe we should take a cue from our prior successes. Seems unlikely though:

"President Obama's newly released drug war budget is essentially the same as Bush's, with roughly twice as much money going to the criminal justice system as to treatment and prevention," said Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the nonprofit Drug Policy Alliance. "This despite Obama's statements on the campaign trail that drug use should be treated as a health issue, not a criminal justice issue."

Obama is requesting a record $15.5 billion for the drug war for 2011, about two thirds of it for law enforcement at the front lines of the battle: police, military and border patrol agents struggling to seize drugs and arrest traffickers and users.

About $5.6 billion would be spent on prevention and treatment.

When will we learn our lesson?