| Block Captain Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Adirondack Park, NY Gender:  Posts: 448 Level up: 92%, 12 Points needed |  |  Hello BP. Welcome to dtt.
Visit often. Post a lot. Quote: |
"Some racist congressman wanted to ban a harmless plant because it was considered taboo because of its mexican affiliation." BP
| And we've been paying for it ever since.
Taking citizens prisoners of Drug War might seem to cost merely the cost of the food, clothing, shelter, education, medical, dental, and other benefits we pay for.
But the cost is more than that. It's most likely before that citizen was criminalized; & taken prisoner, s/he was paying taxes.
So if it costs $25k per year to hold that citizen prisoner; but that citizen was paying $25k in taxes before being taken prisoner of War; then the true cost of holding that citizen prisoner is not $25k / year; but $50k / year.
That might not seem like that much.
But multiply it out by the hundreds of thousands of non-violent prisoners of U.S. Drug War; and it stacks up to be real $money.
And WE'RE paying for it! The victims of Drug War are the tax payers.
Because of recent statistics I read, I thought the U.S. Drug War was costing us ~$9 $Billion per year.
But those statistics were unclear.
It turns out those were just the costs in California!
Nation wide, the costs for this War we are dismally losing is many times that much.
We are losing this War.
But please don't take my word for it.
Just read how vividly the head of the DEA describes our humiliating, ongoing defeat. Quote: |
"In 1960 in this country [U.S.] there were only 4,000,000 people in the entire nation who had ever used an illicit drug at any time in their life. By 1990 we had 80,000,000 people in this country who had used illicit drugs at any time in their life, and the numbers who became hard core, frequent users were proportional and commensurate." DEA Administrator Thomas Constantine
| "Work is the curse of the drinking classes." Oscar Wilde |