A recent article has concluded something just about all of us already knew- not that 2 + 2 = 4, but something much more fundamental: that the war on drugs was a catastrophically expensive failure. The article notes that even the U.S. drug czar acknowledges that the war on drugs has not worked. As a result, the Obama administration has decided to focus more on prevention and treatment and less on wasteful enforcement of ineffective criminal laws.
The article is worth reading and gives a brief, but interesting, history of U.S. drug policies. One troubling part of the article notes that the first war on drugs budget was $100 million in the 1970’s. Now, it’s $15.1 billion. It is scary to think where all of that money is going, why it’s being spent and how much of it is wasted.