40th Birthday For A Failed Program

June 17th will mark the 40th anniversary (or birthday, if you will) of one of the biggest program failures ever by the United States government -- the War on Drugs. On June 17, 1971 President Richard Nixon told the nation:

“America’s public enemy No. 1 in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive. I have asked the Congress to provide the legislative authority and the funds to fuel this kind of an offensive. This will be a worldwide offensive dealing with the problems of sources of supply, as well as Americans who may be stationed abroad, wherever they are in the world.”

That marked the official start of the War on Drugs. Since that day more than a trillion dollars has been spent on the War on Drugs, and over 40 million people have been arrested for drug offenses (most of them for simple possession of a drug). And what has the spending of all that money and the arrest of those millions of people accomplished? Nothing! Drugs of all kinds are readily available to anyone who wants them -- even more widespread and available than they were when this "war" was started.

It's time for the United States government (and all state and local governments) to admit the War on Drugs has been a massive failure -- and spending even more money and imprisoning even more people will not change that. The only thing this "war" has really accomplished is to give the United States the largest prison population in the world (both in terms of total prison population and number of prisoners per 100,000 people in the country) -- resulting in even more money being spent to build and maintain prisons.

It is time for the United States to legalize the recreational use of drugs and tax the hell out of them -- taking the money away from the criminal cartels and putting it in government coffers. It is also time to recognize that the abuse of drugs (like the abuse of alcohol) is a medical problem, and not a criminal problem -- a problem that should be handled through education and rehabilitation. Prison is not now, and never should have been, the country's answer for medical or social problems.

Here are the numbers of drug arrests since 1971. The first number is the number of adults arrested and the number in parentheses is the number of juveniles arrested:

1971..........383,900 (108,100)
1972..........407,300 (120,100)
1973..........463,600 (165,300)
1974..........474,900 (167,200)
1975..........456,000 (145,400)
1976..........464,100 (145,400)
1977..........493,300 (149,400)
1978..........480,000 (148,700)
1979..........435,600 (123,000)

1980..........471,200 (109,700)
1981..........468,100 (91,800)
1982..........584,900 (91,200)
1983..........583,500 (77,900)
1984..........623,700 (84,700)
1985..........718,600 (92,800)
1986..........742,700 (81,400)
1987..........849,500 (87,900)
1988..........1,050,600 (104,600)
1989..........1,247,800 (113,900)

1990..........1,008,300 (81,200)
1991..........931,900 (78,100)
1992..........980,700 (85,700)
1993..........1,017,800 (108,500)
1994..........1,192,800 (158,600)
1995..........1,285,700 (190,400)
1996..........1,295,100 (211,100)
1997..........1,370,400 (213,200)
1998..........1,360,600 (198,500)
1999..........1,365,100 (192,000)

2000..........1,375,600 (203,900)
2001..........1,384,400 (202,500)
2002..........1,352,600 (186,200)
2003..........1,476,800 (201,400)
2004..........1,551,500 (194,200)
2005..........1,654,600 (191,800)
2006..........1,693,100 (196,700)
2007..........1,645,500 (195,700)

And anyone who believes the number of arrests have fallen significantly since 2007 is simply being unrealistic. We can (and should) do better than this.