There is still a long way to go in eliminating the injustices of the war on drugs. Project Free the Dream is advocating, lobbying and design policies for the institution of more drug courts throughout the nation to address these issues. We hope you join our fight. Please visit www.projectfreethedream.org for more information.
Bang-Bang For Your Buck? Systematic Economic Failures of the War on Drugs
By now it is a widely known fact that the War on Drugs has been a failure. After 3 decades, the federal government continues to pursue policies that were enacted as politicians effectively convinced the public of the need to get “tough on crime.” The many laws that are part of this umbrella government anti-crime campaign not only have proven ineffective in their goals—presuming these goals were to curb crime and drug use. They have had the unintended consequence of being an economic disaster.
This disaster presents itself in two ways. The first is in a fiscal sense, where both federal and state governments have seen hundreds of billions of dollars wasted on useless supply-side reduction tactics as well as the unnecessary incarceration of nonviolent criminals. In another sense, this economic catastrophe extends itself into the aftermath of those brought into the criminal justice system for petty crimes, deteriorating the economic strength of many poor communities—especially those of color.
The fiscal costs of the war on drugs have been enormously burdensome on the federal as well as state governments. The Drug Policy Institute (DPI) reports that “Over the past four decades, federal and state governments have poured over $1 trillion into drug war spending.” During this time, most of the money allocated to the war has gone primarily to supply-side reduction efforts as well as incarceration of drug dealers, users and possessors.
Similarly, states have been actively aiming to suppress drugs through wasteful approaches. The Cato Institute released a report that put state and local expenditures on the war on drugs at prohibitive $25 billion, with an average of 41% of judicial and legal budgets devoted to drug prohibition. As a solution to crime reduction, this seems ludicrous, as Cato finds that as a fraction of total drug related arrests, “possession arrests, stand between 33 percent and 85 percent.”
The White House reports in their february break down of the National Drug Control Budget, that “56% being used for criminal law enforcement and interdiction on both domestic and international operations.” Forbes released an article in Oct. 2013, noting that supply-side reduction efforts “enable traffickers to earn a premium for undertaking the special risks involved in supplying an illegal product.” As the price of the product goes up, suppliers “are highly motivated to find ways around whatever roadblocks the government throws up between them and their customers.”
Yet intricacies in the system, such as asset forfeiture and funding schemes continue to receive support from law enforcement and police unions aiming to deal with the threat that the drug trade poses to public safety. The system also incentivizes racial and socioeconomic inequities as the DPI suggests “the easiest way for local police to up their numbers and boost their careers is to target low-level drug offenders, not violent kingpins.” Overwhelmingly, these targets are African Americans and Latino.
According to the DPI’s report, The war has put “half a million people behind bars for drug violations.” An overwhelming--and disproportionate--majority of these people are persons of color, inflicting severe consequences on their communities. Michelle Alexander, in her treatise The New Jim Crow, finds that “in major cities wracked by the drug war, as many as 80 percent of young African American men have criminal records, thus are subject to legalized discrimination,” with employment discrimination playing a major role. She continues, that following the release of black and latino inmates, the “laws, rules and regulations discriminate against ex-offenders, effectively preventing their meaningful reintegration into the mainstream economy.”
Alexander notes that “the National Employment Law Project (NELP) suggests that many employers refuse to consider people with criminal records despite the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) recommendations against it.” However, the EEOC, the federal commission in charge of supervising employment practices and punishing discrimination, accepts bans under vague language that is easily manipulated to further discrimination practices. Alexander adds that the NELP finds that employers in hundreds of geographic areas “blatantly violate EEOC guidelines.”
These hardships are exacerbated by the likeliness that ex-offenders will generally possess little formal education, with over 70 percent of the being high school dropouts. Additionally, finding themselves in meager economic situations following release, transportation and housing become increasingly difficult for the ex-cons to access. Joblessness in African American communities becomes a main driver for repeated offenses and violent crimes.
There is hope, however, as in the last budget report for National Drug Control, released by the White House in February, up to 44% of the $26 billion have been allocated to treatment and prevention--a 3% increase from fiscal year 2014. Having so many resources devoted to supply reduction and incarceration has squeezed out potential investment in treatment. The DPI states that “the drug war has created enormous public health costs by as limiting the availability of harm reduction programs that could quell overdose and infectious disease transmission rates,” such as drug courts. These alternative processing and sentencing courts have proven incredibly effective in reducing recidivism, providing rehabilitation and education to drug abusers, and are renowned for their affordability ($1 on every $3 spent per inmate). It is a promising alternative to the fiscal and socio-economic disaster resulting from the current system.
