The war on drugs has been a "failure", or has it?

"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.
- Martha Mendoza, AP

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100513/ap_on_re_us/failed_drug_war

Some high (or low) lights from our 40-year "war on drugs":

- Nixon proposed the war on drugs to "protect our young people" from the hippies, degenerates, and homeless Vietnam vet addicts (who only took drugs to cope with the horrible war that he escalated). When adjusted for inflation, the current war on drugs budget is 31X larger than Nixon's.

- We've spent $20B to export the war to other nations ($6B to Colombia alone). In many ways, Colombia and Mexico (and definitely Afghanistan) are less safe today than 1970. Speaking of Afghanistan, politicians often say that we have to stop the Taliban because they're responsible for exporting the bulk of global heroin to the West. Well a recent UN/CIA study showed that the Taliban account for about 3% of total heroin trade in that country, while the president's brother's cartel (Walid "Escobar" Karzai) accounts for much more (http://www.kqed.org/epArchive/R201005131030).  

- $33M on "Just Say No" and other youth marketing, but drug use among HS students has been relatively unchanged since the 1970s. Though the CDC reports that overdoses have risen since, peaking at 20,000 last year.

From the AP: $121 billion to arrest more than 37 million nonviolent drug offenders (or $3.3k per arrest - imagine how many books and meals that could buy), 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.

- The Justice Dept states "an overburdened justice system, a strained health care system, lost productivity, and environmental destruction" is costing the US $215B PER YEAR.

- At $320B per year worldwide (about the GDP of Argentina), the drug trade accounts for 1% of all human commerce, and that doesn't include drug enforcement and drug rehab.

------------

But hey, the Navy Seals got to brag that they whacked Pablo Escobar (at one time on Forbes' 10 richest list) with a killer sniper shot to the head, and Hollywood made millions off "Scarface", "Clear and Present Danger", "Blow", "American Gangster", "The Wire", "Miami Vice" (Michael Mann version), etc.

But on the other hand, the "prison-industrial complex" has risen to become a serious economic and political player in our country (especially in CA). We've locked away thousands of poor colored people, and under the justification of drug enforcement, authorities have illegally seized millions of dollars worth of honest property for their own benefit (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91490480, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126386819). We've sold billions of dollars of military and intelligence hardware to US communities and (oppressive, corrupt) foreign governments. Thousands of Mexicans, Colombians, Afghans, and Americans have died. So if you're a warden, drug kingpin, member of law enforcement, arms manufacturer, conservative politician, or racist/xenophobe, then the war on drugs has been a smashing success for your careers and values. The pro-war camp says that the world would be worse off if the war on drugs was never declared, and drug abuse/criminality were permitted to run rampant. That is debatable, but clearly the resources haven't been used in the most intelligent, effective manner.