- From 1987 to 1998 state spending on corrections increased by 30% while spending on higher education decreased by 18.2%. (6)
- State prison budgets are growing twice as fast as spending on public colleges and universities. (7)
By the government's own standards, are we winning the drug war?
No. Despite the exponential growth in spending on the drug war , illicit drugs are cheaper and purer than they were two decades ago,(8) and continue to be readily available. In addition, according to White House estimates, 57% of Americans in need of drug treatment do not receive it, in spite of its proven cost effectiveness in reducing drug use. (9)
- Between 1981 and 1998, the price of heroin and cocaine dropped sharply while their levels of purity rose. (10)
- According to a 1999 survey by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, drugs continue to be widely available to America's high school students. Almost 90% of twelfth graders participating in the survey said that marijuana was "very easy" or "fairly easy" to get, over 47% said cocaine was "very easy" or "fairly easy" to get and more than 32% said that heroin was "very easy" or "fairly easy" to get. (11)
What has been proven to be the most cost effective method of decreasing drug abuse and related societal costs?
Treatment.
- A study by the RAND Drug Policy Research Center found that treatment is 10 times more cost effective than interdiction in reducing the use of cocaine in the United States. (12)
- The same study found that every additional dollar invested in substance abuse treatment saves taxpayers more than $7 in societal costs, and that additional domestic law enforcement costs 15 times as much as treatment to achieve the same reduction in societal costs. (13)
Who really profits from drug prohibition?
Organized Crime. According to the United Nations, drug trafficking is a $400 billion per year industry, equaling 8% of the world's trade. (14) By empowering organized criminals with enormous profits, prohibition stimulates violence, corrupts governments at all levels, and erodes community order.
Arms manufacturers, the prison industry, and other special interest groups. MUCH MORE
If the United States would revamp their so-called "War on Drugs" and concentrate on those drugs which present a clear danger to individuals and communities, i.e., Meth, Cocaine, and Heroin, and legalize marijuana, the cost of the "War on Drugs" would essentially disappear. Marijuana IS NOT a dangerous drug as study after study has concluded, and if individual states would legalize this so-called dangerous drug that has enormous medical benefits and tax it like alcohol, the United States would deal a tremendous blow to the violent Mexican and Colombian drug cartels and allow the Border Patrol and DEA to concentrate on the illegal drugs that do present a clear and present danger to individuals and the associated crime that occurs because of the effects of those drugs. We would generate much needed tax income and help to alleviate crime and health issues that these drugs cause and just as important, because of the financial blow it would deal to the drug cartels, save thousands of lives in Mexico that has turned into a virtual War Zone as these cartels fight to smuggle their number one profit maker, marijuana, into the United States.
President Obama has pledged that the government would work to reduce Medicare/Medicaid fraud. Instead of looking at it as a way to reduce some of the fraud, if we placed the same emphasis on fraud that we put on the War on Drugs, a comprehensive multi-pronged program working in concert with one another over just two or three decades would help to revitalize our economy and would pay for the social programs that Washington is attempting to cut to fund our numerous "Wars" that are currently bankrupting our entire country.
Consider this; what sense does it make to imprison people, often for decades for marijuana offenses which is often a victimless crime those that are caught defrauding Medicare/Medicaid, which are incredibly low considering the cost to the American taxpayer, often get off with fines and probation and/or prison sentences that are often lower than someone that steals an automobile!
In summation, considering the huge amount of money that is lost on Medicare/Medicaid fraud, it is obvious that crime does pay when individuals or corporations defraud the government but get caught with more than an ounce of pot in several states and we lock-up these "criminals" for extremely long sentences and demonstrate that if you really want to make large sums of money, forget about selling or using drugs, instead, defraud the government and the American Taxpayer's and it becomes more than obvious that so-called white-collar crime does pay and unless we address this lopsided miscarriage of justice (sic), the drug cartels win and the American public, as it has for years, winds-up funding a system that is utterly broken and in desperate need of repair.
We have the ability to correct these injustices and to understand how to make real health-care reform work, we need to revamp our entire philosophy in regard crime and punishment and mete out punishments that match the crime, not those who the public have been brainwashed to believe that pose the worst threat to the public. As it stands right now, the worst threat we face is not from marijuana and a broken justice system, but Washington's total inability to see the forest through the trees!
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