US drug
war has met none of its goals

After 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.

Even U.S.
drug czar Gil Kerlikowske concedes the strategy
hasn't worked.

"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."

Using Freedom of Information Act requests, archival records, federal budgets
and dozens of interviews with leaders and analysts, the AP tracked where that
money went, and found that the United
States repeatedly increased budgets for
programs that did little to stop the flow of drugs. In 40 years, taxpayers
spent more than:

_ $20 billion to fight the drug gangs in their home countries. In Colombia, for example, the United States spent more than $6 billion, while
coca cultivation increased and trafficking moved to Mexico _ and the violence along
with it.

_ $33 billion in marketing "Just Say No"-style
messages to America's
youth and other prevention programs. High school students report the
same rates of illegal drug use as they did in 1970, and the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention says drug overdoses have "risen steadily"
since the early 1970s to more than 20,000 last year.

_ $49 billion for law enforcement along America's borders to cut off the
flow of illegal drugs. This year, 25 million Americans will snort, swallow,
inject and smoke illicit drugs, about 10 million more than in 1970, with the
bulk of those drugs imported from Mexico.

_ $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.

_ $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.

At 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.

Harvard University economist Jeffrey Miron says the only sure thing taxpayers get for more
spending on police and soldiers is more homicides.

"Current policy is not having an effect of reducing drug use," Miron said, "but it's costing the public a
fortune."