U.S. federal, state and local governments have spent hundreds of billions of dollars trying to make
America “drug-free.” Yet heroin,
cocaine, methamphetamine and other illicit
drugs are cheaper, purer and easier to get than ever before. Nearly half a million
people are behind bars on nonviolent drug charges - more than all of western Europe (with a bigger population) incarcerates for all violent AND nonviolent offenses. The war on
drugs has become a war on families, a war on public health and a war on our constitutional rights.
Many of the problems the drug war purports to resolve are in fact caused by the drug war itself. So-called “drug-related” crime is a direct result of drug prohibition's distortion of immutable laws of supply and demand. Public health problems
like HIV and Hepatitis C are all exacerbated by zero tolerance laws that restrict access to clean needles. The drug war is not the promoter of family values that some would have
us believe. Children of inmates are at risk of educational failure, joblessness, addiction and delinquency. Drug abuse is
bad, but the drug war is worse.
