9.8 billion dollars this year (and ticking)
March 10, 2008 by Abhishek
As dumb wars go, this is the dumbest of them all. It involves more money than is spent on food programs, science or technology. It arrests about two million people (that’s almost 1 percent of the population) every year, most of them small users. It is responsible for about a quarter of the current inmate population in the United States. And remarkably, it has nothing to show for it, except that it has driven a business - that would have been perfectly controlled and safe if it were legitimate - underground, into the abyss of gang violence, disease and decay.
One day, people will look back at the most ill-conceived, wasteful, senseless and fruitless program in the history of civilization, and wonder- WHY?
Till then, there is the drug clock to remind us of the costs that the War on Drugs drug-users entails.
