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<\/a>\nGeoffrey Alderman writes in the Guardian about\n<\/a>\nGeoffrey Alderman writes in the Guardian about\n\nWhat next \u2013 penalising students for taking caffeine?<\/a>\n\nFor the past 90 years this debate has been dominated by the professional purveyors of moral panic in our society \u2013 a toxic combination of politicians, pressmen, prelates and policemen, aided and abetted by ill-informed parents, who have sought to pre-empt any serious discussion of “psychoactive” substances.\n<\/blockquote>\nThat’s in the U.K.\n\nMeanwhile,\n\nAP IMPACT: US drug war has met none of its goals<\/a>:\n\n\n
\nAfter 40 years, the United States’ war on drugs has cost $1 trillion and hundreds of thousands of lives, and for what? Drug use is rampant and violence even more brutal and widespread.\n\nEven U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske concedes the strategy hasn’t worked.\n
\n“In the grand scheme, it has not been successful,” Kerlikowske told The Associated Press. “Forty years later, the concern about drugs and drug problems is, if anything, magnified, intensified.”\n<\/blockquote>\nWhat does this mean to Georgia?\nIt has to do with what’s been spent to fight that non-war since Nixon\ndeclared it:\n
\nHis first drug-fighting budget was $100 million. Now it’s $15.1 billion, 31 times Nixon’s amount even when adjusted for inflation.\n<\/blockquote>\nThe AP researched where that money went, and two of their points are:\n\n– $121 billion to arrest more than 37 million nonviolent drug offenders, about 10 million of them for possession of marijuana. Studies show that jail time tends to increase drug abuse.\n\n– $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.\n<\/blockquote>\nAnd that’s only direct expenditures.\nLook a little farther, and:\n
\nAt the same time, drug abuse is costing the nation in other ways. The Justice Department estimates the consequences of drug abuse – “an overburdened justice system, a strained health care system, lost productivity, and environmental destruction” – cost the United States $215 billion a year.\n\nHarvard University economist Jeffrey Miron says the only sure thing taxpayers get for more spending on police and soldiers is more homicides.\n
\n“Current policy is not having an effect of reducing drug use,” Miron said, “but it’s costing the public a fortune.”\n<\/blockquote>\nThis isn’t actually news.\n\nWalter Cronkite,<\/a> for example, told us about this years ago:\n
\nHundreds of billions of dollars have been spent on this effort – with no one held accountable for its failure.\n\nAmid the clich\u00e9s of the drug war, our country has lost sight of the scientific facts. Amid the frantic rhetoric of our leaders, we’ve become blind to reality: The war on drugs, as it is currently fought, is too expensive, and too inhumane.\n