Will Obama Declare Drug War a “Failed Program?”

Promise to Eliminate Ineffective Programs Should Start Here

President Obama made a refreshing promise during his inaugural address to eliminate government programs that aren’t working.  The alleged “war on drugs” should therefore be a top priority for this administration, because no other government effort has cost so much in both direct and indirect expenses while delivering no discernable result toward its goal.

America jails more people than any country in the world, which is directly attributable to a failed drug policy that has had no effect on drug use rates.

Mass incarcerations resulting from the war on drugs have been disproportionately borne by minorities while having little or no affect on drug use rates.  The government’s draconian approach costs billions in direct costs, creates a permanent underclass and made the U.S. penal population the largest in the world.  Russia has fewer people in prison than the United States.

President Obama, U.S. drug policy is a colossal, unmatched failure of devastating proportion.

Illicit drug use rates in the U.S. have remained amazingly flat since the inception of the war on drugs in 1973.  Incarcerations have skyrocketed, but the final user has always found a way to get what they want, and the numbers indicate they always will.  The increased incarcerations have had absolutely no effect on the use of drugs, and this is an inescapable fact after more than 35 years of our “war.”

The category that has seen the highest increase since the 1980’s is the inappropriate use of prescription medications according to the 2000 National Survey on Drug Use & Health.  There has been a 367 percent rise in “the non-medical use of prescription-type pain reliever, tranquilizer, stimulant, or sedative.”  Since 2000, those numbers have leveled off as the text below explains.

The numbers from 2007 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: National Findings report are indisputable and troubling.  Drug use has remained below 10 percent in every category for people ages 12 and older, and the largest variant has been a factor of 3.75 percent in a downward direction for illicit drugs and marijuana (8.0 and 5.8 respectively in 2007).  The use of alcohol on the other hand is startling. 

Americans drink a lot of alcohol.  About 51.1 percent of Americans older than age 12 say they’re current drinkers, and 23.3 percent have engaged in binge drinking during the last 30 days.  Binge drinking was defined as having consumed five or more drinks at the same occasion during at least one day in the 30 days prior to the survey.

Despite the relatively low use of narcotic drugs defined as illegal, the incarceration rates for the use of these substances are statistically outrageous.  Drug arrests have increased by 300 percent since the 1980’s and the prison population rates for drug offenses have risen from 6 percent in 1980 to 23 percent by 1996.  Total prison populations have more than quadrupled since 1973.  The number of Americans incarcerated for drug offenses alone is larger than the total prison population of the entire European Union. 

America imprisons more people than any country in the world and this dramatic rise is solely attributed to our drug policy - so much for the land of the free idea.

In my home state of New Jersey that arguably has the worst drug policy in the nation, more than one-third of prisoners are being held on drug offenses, which does not reflect in any way the actual use of drugs in the state.  About 48 percent of New Jersey’s incoming prisoners during 2003 were convicted on drug charges, which is 154 percent higher than the national average of 31 percent.

And African-Americans are really taking it on the chin for this policy too.  Even though the African-American community in New Jersey is only 13 percent of the population, they comprise 70 percent of incoming prisoners for drug-related offenses. 

I asked a friend I’ve known for many years as a reporter covering federal District Courts why the disparity exists.  He spoke on the condition of anonymity, but he spoke plainly as an African-American law enforcement officer.

“Blacks are just easier to catch and easier to convict,” he said as he bowed his head.  “When an officer sees a $100,000 Hummer parked in front of a house in Camden worth less than half what the car is, it’s not hard to figure out what’s going on.  Once we get them, they don’t have any money left over for high-priced attorneys - they spent it all on ‘bling.’”

They’re not the only ones wasting their money, because the war on drugs has been a money pit unlike any other in American history.

In New Jersey alone, the cost for imprisoning drug-related offenders averages $666 million per year for their incarceration; the loss of taxable income is almost $250 million per year and the loss to earning capacity as the result of having a criminal record is about $800 million per year.  Net loss so far: $1.7 billion in New Jersey by itself every year.

But let’s factor in the costs of the prisons.  In 2001, New Jersey’s prison expenditures for the drug-related population alone totaled another $800 million.  Now the total cost is $2.6 billion per year.

That’s a big number, but it doesn’t include the cost of the law enforcement officials who have to actually capture the offenders.  There aren’t any numbers that were available at the time of this publication for the cost of law enforcement in New Jersey, however there are national percentages that provide an excellent reference.

According to the Department of Justice, local agencies with 100 or more officers are heavily involved with primary drug enforcement responsibility.  For county police, the percentage of those dedicated to the task is 87 percent, municipal police departments dedicate 79 percent of their officers and sheriffs’ offices involve 69 percent of their total law enforcement capacity on drug enforcement.

There were no numbers available for the cost of those law enforcement officers, but for argument’s sake, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to add at least $1 billion to New Jersey’s already staggering costs.  That would bring the total cost of an unreasonable and completely unbalanced drug policy for New Jersey alone to $3.8 billion, which is entirely relevant because the state now faces a budget deficit of a paltry $3 billion.  The major difference being that we waste more than what our deficit amounts to for each year we continue this failed policy.

Does anybody care to multiply that number by 50 to represent all of the states?  Half that?  Okay, for those of you that are curious, even at half the rate New Jersey spends on this ludicrous policy, the money spent would be $95 billion for the nation as a whole.  But the actual number is far more like $142 billion and up.

Every year, we spend $142 billion and upwards.

And we haven’t affected drug use one bit. 

In fact, of all the incarcerated individuals for drug offenses, only 11 percent were top-level dealers.  The rest were drug mules, street dealers and mid-level people.  The net loss for the real targets of the war is $122.5 billion dollars every year.

It’s time to put an end to this.  While I don’t advocate mass absolutions, we have to figure out a better way. 

I can already hear Rush Limbaugh having a grand old time with the issue, God bless his OxyContin-loving soul, but the stupidity of this policy is quite clear.

We can’t afford stupidity in America anymore.  The price tag is entirely too high.