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Friday, November 27th, 2015

Over $1 Trillion Spent Since Nixon Began The War On Drugs

Author:     Kit O'Connell
Source:     Mint Press News
Publication Date:     November 12, 2015
 Link: Over $1 Trillion Spent Since Nixon Began The War On Drugs
Stephan:   The social policies of the U.S. are a disaster. We have 17 million children with hunger issues. We have somewhere between 400,000 and a million rape kits sitting untested in police evidence rooms around the country -- only 3 per cent of rapes in the U.S. result in arrests and conviction. And tens of thousands of vets are homeless. We don't have the money we are told to solve those problems. But we have had over a trillion dollars to bust people for drugs, mostly marijuana.

Drug-War-NazisWASHINGTON — The “war on drugs” costs Americans a staggering amount of money every year that it persists. Despite the billions they receive, federal, state and local law enforcement have a proven inability to stem the flow of drugs on the nation’s streets.

Since Richard Nixon declared a war on drugs in June 1971, the cost of that “war” had soared to over $1 trillion by 2010. Over $51 billion is spent annually to fight the drug war in the United States, according to Drug Policy Alliance, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting more humane drug policies.

It’s also taken a massive toll on human lives. In 2013, at least 2.2 million people were incarcerated in the U.S., with some estimates reaching 2.4 million, making the U.S. home to the world’s largest prison population. A vast number of those prisoners are victims of the war on drugs, reported Alejandro Crawford in U.S. News and World Report in March:
“Still, we should take comfort in the fact that these are mostly violent criminals and hardened drug kingpins, right? Not […]

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