The war in Afganistan may have overtaken the Vietnam War to become America’s longest military engagement, but in terms of longevity, cost and futility, nothing can compete with America’s “war on drugs.”
The fact that the war on drugs is failing has become so obvious that even Foxnews.com, the online portal of the Republican Party’s own propaganda channel, said so, at length, in an article published last May:
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…
In 1970, hippies were smoking pot and dropping acid. Soldiers were coming home from Vietnam hooked on heroin. Embattled President Richard M. Nixon seized on a new war he thought he could win.
“This nation faces a major crisis in terms of the increasing use of drugs, particularly among our young people,” Nixon said as he signed the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act. The following year, he said: “Public enemy No. 1 in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive.”
His first drug-fighting budget was $100 million. Now it’s $15.1 billion, 31 times Nixon’s amount even when adjusted for inflation.
Using Freedom of Information Act requests, archival records, federal budgets and dozens of interviews with leaders and analysts, the AP tracked where that money went, and found that the United States repeatedly increased budgets for programs that did little to stop the flow of drugs. In 40 years, taxpayers spent more than:
- $20 billion to fight the drug gangs in their home countries. In Colombia, for example, the United States spent more than $6 billion, while coca cultivation increased and trafficking moved to Mexico — and the violence along with it.
- $33 billion in marketing “Just Say No”-style messages to America’s youth and other prevention programs. High school students report the same rates of illegal drug use as they did in 1970, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says drug overdoses have “risen steadily” since the early 1970s to more than 20,000 last year.
- $49 billion for law enforcement along America’s borders to cut off the flow of illegal drugs. This year, 25 million Americans will snort, swallow, inject and smoke illicit drugs, about 10 million more than in 1970, with the bulk of those drugs imported from Mexico.
- $121 billion to arrest more than 37 million nonviolent drug offenders, about 10 million of them for possession of marijuana. Studies show that jail time tends to increase drug abuse.
- $450 billion to lock those people up in federal prisons alone. Last year, half of all federal prisoners in the U.S. were serving sentences for drug offenses.
At the same time, drug abuse is costing the nation in other ways. The Justice Department estimates the consequences of drug abuse — “an overburdened justice system, a strained health care system, lost productivity, and environmental destruction” — cost the United States $215 billion a year.
Harvard University economist Jeffrey Miron says the only sure thing taxpayers get for more spending on police and soldiers is more homicides.
“Current policy is not having an effect of reducing drug use,” Miron said, “but it’s costing the public a fortune.”
The fact that even the GOP’s own propaganda mill says the drug war is a failure suggests that here, finally, is genuine bipartisan agreement: The current approach to preventing or ameliorating drug abuse is not working. The country is throwing billions of dollars in good money after the proverbial bad, year after year.
So before lawmakers start cutting programs that provide food, housing and health care to American children and the elderly, they look at this massive agency, starting with its overseas operations, which, according to the the agency’s FY 2010 Performance Budget [PDF] includes about 600 agents stationed in 62 foreign countries around the globe. (See the complete list of DEA field offices below.)
Perhaps those jobs could be folded into the U.S. embassy staff in the host countries — or maybe the salaries of key DEA agents overseas could be paid out of the budgets of their true employer, the CIA.
But mainly, the financial crisis presents an opportunity to rethink the “war on drugs,” one of the Big-Government Republicans’ biggest failures, and give serious consideration to alternative approaches including legalization and taxation of marijuana, drug courts programs that offer alternatives to prison as well as other common-sense programs and initiatives that address drug abuse in a realistic way.
Complete list of overseas DEA field offices:
North and Central America Region: Belize, Canada, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama
Andean Region and Southern Cone: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela
Caribbean Region: Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Barbados, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Netherlands Antilles, St. Kitts & Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent & the Grenadines, Suriname, The Bahamas, Trinidad & Tobago, Turks & Caicos Islands
Far East Region: Australia, Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Cook Islands, East Timor, Fiji, French Polynesia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Kiribati, Laos, Macau, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nauru, New Caldeonia, New Zealand, Niue, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Singapore, Solomon Islands, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, Vietnam, Wallis & Futuna, Western Samoa
Mid East Region: Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bulgaria, Chad, Cyprus, Dijibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Georgia, Greece, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kazakstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Libya, Maldives, Nepal, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Yemen
Europe Region: Albania, Algeria, Angola, Austria, Azores, Balearic Islands, Belgium, Belarus, Benin, Bosnia, Botswana, Burundi, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Canary Islands, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Channel Islands, Comoros, Congo, Croatia, Czech Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Denmark, Estonia, Equatorial European Union (EU), Finland, France, Gabon, Germany, Ghana, Gibraltar, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Greenland, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Isle of Man, Italy, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Latvia, Lesotho, Liechtenstein, Liberia, Luxembourg, Lithuania, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Malta, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Netherlands, Northern Ireland (6 counties), Norway, Niger, Nigeria, Portugal, Principality of Andorra, Poland, Rwanda, Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland, San Marino, Serbia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, Slovak Republic, Spain, Spanish Enclaves (Ceuta & Melilla), Sweden, Switzerland, Tanzania, The Gambia, Togo, Tunisia, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United Nations (UN), Uganda, Western Sahara, Zambia, Zimbabwe
Two things:
1. The proponents of “The War on Drugs” will say, “Yes, but all these figures would be much WORSE if we had’nt intervened!” Note that these proponents are almost always profiting in one way or the other in “fighting drugs.” Which brings me to my second point;
2. “The War on Drugs” is all abount MONEY$$$ on BOTH sides. The 15 billion from taxpayers up front gets the whole thing rolling, and keeping drugs illegal creates drug prohibition BILLIONS for “the bad guy” drug dealers, and creates BILLIONS for “the good guy” cops in property, assests, cash (and drug)seizures, and of course all kinds of “law-enforcement” jobs. All of this comes from the same place it started with the 15 billion in seed money… THE TAXPAYERS. It’s a perfect cyclical scam that will NEVER be phased out.
The first President to claim that we are winning the war on drugs was, also, Nixon.
I say to the “pro drug war” people, if we were winning way back then and we are winning now, isn’t this taking an inordinate amount of time to complete??
Just decriminalize every damn thing. Trust me, the world will not crumble and blow away. As with alcohol prohibition the drug usage would drop.
But, as Nikolai says, it’s big money on both sides. And until we get politicians who are for the people and not bought and paid for by big money it will continue.
I say decriminalize pot, period. Forget government control of it and taxation too. The main groups fighting legalization are the dealers and the justice system, both groups are profiting from it. As always, money rules the day.