Insanity - Four Decades of U.S. Counterdrug Strategy

Synopsis

In The Four Decades Since President Nixon First Declared War On Drugs The U.s.counterdrug Strategy Has Remained Virtually Unchanged – Favoring Supply-reduction, Law Enforcement And Criminal Sanctions Over Demand-reduction, Treatment And Education. While The Annual Counterdrug Budget Has Ballooned From $100 Million To $25 Billion, Drug Availability Of Most Illicit Drugs Remains At An All-time High. The Human Cost Is Staggering – Nearly 40,000 Drug-related Deaths In The U.s. Annually. The Societal Impact, In Purely Economic Terms, Is Now Estimated To Be Approximately $200 Billion Per Year. And The Global Illicit Drug Industry Now Accounts For 1 Percent Of All Commerce On The Planet – Approximately $320 Billion Annually. Legalization Is Almost Certainly Not Theanswer; However, An Objective Analysis Of Available Data Confirms That: 1) The U.s. Has Pursued Essentially The Same Flawed Supply-reduction Strategy For Forty Years; And 2) Simply Increasing The Amount Of Money Invested Each Year In This Strategy Will Not Make It Successful. Faced With Impending Budget Cuts And A Future Of Budget Austerity, Policymakers Must Replace The Longstanding U.s. Counterdrug Strategy With A Pragmatic,science-based, Demand-reduction Strategy That Offers Some Prospect Of Reducing The Economic And Societal Impacts Of Illicit Drugs On American Society.