October 1999
Talking Points
Edited by Marc Beauchamp
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Just say dud
Futile efforts to enforce [drug] prohibition have been pursued even more vigorously in the 1980s and 1990s than they were during alcohol prohibition in the 1920s. Drug enforcement cost about $22 billion in the Reagan years and another $45 billion in the four years of the Bush administration. The federal government spent $16 billion on drug control programs in 1998 alone and plans to spend $18 billion this year.
What good has it all done? Well, total drug arrests are now more than 1.5 million a year. There are about 400,000 drug offenders in jails and prisons now. Drug offenders are about 60% of all federal prisoners, while those in federal prison for violent offenses are only 12.4% of the total.
As for discouraging young people from using drugs, the massive federal effort has largely been a dud. Every year from 1975 to 1995 at least 82% of high school seniors said they found marijuana "fairly easy" or "very easy" to obtain.
- DAVID BOAZ
The Albuquerque Journal (NM)
August 23, 1999