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Miscellaneous Points on Drugs

A GAO report said "Despite various U.S. government interdiction efforts, central America continues to be a primary shipping point for cocaine shipments to the United States available evidence suggest that the supply of drugs entering the United States remains virtually uninterrupted."(14 ).

The head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Maria Costa said about the War On Drugs from 1998 to 2007 that there been a thirty percent drop in drug prices and "no evidence that drugs have become more difficult to obtain." (15 ).

Research based in the New Millennium (2006 - 2007) showed that US States with tolerant Cannabis laws did not show a rise in Use (16 ).

General WOD

More than 60% of federal prison inmates are incarcerated for violations of federal drug laws. One in five are petty offenders, in many cases naive young people who ran into sophisticated entrapment procedures (17 ).

In 2004 federal and state governments spent 40 and 60 billion dollars to fight the war on drugs. This is ten times the amount spent in 1980 (18).

Research by Harvard economist Jeffrey A. Miron, inject $76.8 billion a year into the U.S. economy. $44.1 billion through savings on law enforcement plus at least $32.7 billion in tax revenues from regulated sales. He also published a study in 2005 looking at just legalizing marijuana, this study was endorse by more than 500 economist including Nobel laureates Milton Friedman of Stanford University, George Akerlof of the University of California and Vernon Smith of George Mason University. They said in an open letter to President George W. Bush, congress, governors and state legislators "We urge the country to commence an open and honest debate about marijuana prohibition," and "At a minimum, this debate will force advocates of current policy to show that prohibition has benefits sufficient to justify the cost to taxpayers, foregone tax revenues and numerous ancillary consequences that result from marijuana prohibition."(19).

Right after Alcohol prohibition was revoked, the US government received half a billion in revenue. By 1936 Alcohol taxes made up 13 percent of federal revenue (20 ).

Swedish Psychiatrist Nils Bejerot believed too many policy makers in the USA were too permissive on drug use. He wrote several books and testified before US Senate in 1974 on hearings about Hashish and cannabis. Exposing his philosophy, of no tolerance (21 ). Nils didn't go for drug treatment saying "It has never been scientifically proven that treatment of addicts by psychotherapy is better than no treatment at all," (22 ).

What of Nils idea? I mentioned in the American Orphan section, Iran that is a devoutly religious country and has extremely strict drug policies. They execute people for certain drug offense. Also consider Indonesia it also executes people for certain drug offenses, more than half the people on death row are there for drug offenses and is strongly religious (23 ). Indonesia also has a problem with drug abuse (24 ). Given penalties and social more of both the drug use is probably higher than reported. If the Zero tolerance people are right, why is there any drug use in either country?

In Asia as part of enforcement of drug laws 16 countries now have the death penalty for some drug offense. Its believed that Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand have a high percentage of executions for drug related offenses (25 ).