Japan: $12.3 million
United States: $7.5 million
Hong Kong: $2.2 million
South Korea: $1.1 million
Mexico City: $365,000
UK: 16.3% . . .
Brazil: 22.7% . . .
Bolivia: 42.5% . . .
Indonesia: 50.6% . . .
Albania: 69.2% . . . 
Netherlands: $36 . . .
Spain: $26 . . . 
Serbia: $119 . . .
Turkey: $220 . . .
Australia: $241 . . .
Germany: $266 . . .
Portugal: $320 . . .
Greece: $718 . . . 
France:1.5% ($333) . . .
Luxembourg: 2.4% ($820) . . .
Russia: 3.5% ($280) . . .
Americans pay a lot to keep illegal drugs off the streets. A recent review of the evidence suggests much of our investment in the Drug Wars is wasted, if not outright counterproductive. We have only 5 percent of the world’s population yet about a quarter of the world’s prisoners. Four fifths of the 1.8 million arrests made in 2007 were for drug possession. In 1980, 40,000 people were jailed on drug charges. Today the figure is about half a million.
This is pretty expensive. Jailing drug offenders costs state prison systems some $6.6 billion a year. And the Feds must pay about as much. This is only part of the price. The consequences for inmates and their families is huge, in terms of lost wages and the impact on their children. The battle against drugs, moreover, itself produces violent criminal activity. This imposes a burden not only on the United States but also on countries like Mexico and Colombia, along the chain of supply to American consumers.
Perhaps it makes sense to ask what the huge investment in the Drug Wars has bought for us. It hasn’t diminished drug abuse. According to surveys by the World Heath Organization, 42 percent of American adults have tried marijuana. This is twice as many as in the Netherlands, France or Germany, and more than four times as many as in Mexico or Italy. Similarly, 16 percent of adults in the United States have tried cocaine, four times as many as in Mexico, Spain or Colombia, and eight times as many as in Germany or the Netherlands.
Interestingly, American anti-narcotic policies tend to be much harsher than elsewhere. Western European countries prioritize “harm reduction,” focusing on treating rather than jailing addicts. Portugal went all out in 2001 and decriminalized illegal substances. Switzerland has a program to give addicts daily heroin shots supervised by a nurse in a clinical setting. It has found that crime rates and unemployment among participants drop during participation. In Latin America, Argentina and Mexico have decriminalized possession of some illicit substances.
But for all the statements to the contrary, the United States is still pursuing its War on Drugs with the same tools used during the Nixon administration, treating its addicts with cops and prisons.
Eduardo,
I agree with your perspective. Rampant spending on war/s in general are obscene and add the war on drugs…its no wonder that we are in this fiscal debacle. I was looking for a cost estimator per administration from the 70s till present accounting for what percent of our current debt can be accounted for by spending on the “war on drugs” and incarceration of non violent offenders vs. treatment programs.
put me on your list. and if you need a guest writer let me know.
Paul
Whatever is said about the cost of the war on drugs is an understatement when thinking of what México is going through today: In Mexico, our every day news are topped with violence, most of it carried out by Mexicans using US arms. Every day we have numberless murders, more often than not with unconceivable cruelty. Every day we observe the incapacity or unwillingness of our government agencies regarding the fate of citizens and due process of law. México’s government shows an utter disregard of people and of the fate of victims. It’s spokesmen, including the president, brag about the number of ‘capos’ that police or military forces bring down, but are totally unconcerned of the fact that dozens of others spring out to replace them. They also show an utter indifference to the numberless evidence of narco infiltration in all government entities, particularly in police and military agencies.
Be it by the hand of narcos or government agents, we are the perfect example of what comes by the laws of the market: perfectly attuned, the Mexican government seems well bent on its knees to absorb the cost of keeping US drug consumers happy. In this war, it has even allowed a ‘fast and furious’ program involving the US smuggling into Mexico US guns and other arms so as to “track them to their final users”. Mexico puts in the violence and the dead, the US keeps its drug consumers happy!!!
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