By: Daniel McCombs

I thought that by quitting drugs a few years ago I would be able to finally get behind the War on Drugs, and see all of its benefits. But four years clean has shown me the exact opposite. A fifty year war that takes billions of tax-payers’ money per year (perhaps several trillion if you calculate its entirety), all in the effort to eradicate drugs. But is such a feat possible? No, would be the simple answer. We spend already billions of dollars just on our habits with legal drugs—coffee, cigarettes, alcohol, pills, etc. etc. To say that the harder drugs, or illicit, can be just picked off one by one is absolutely ludicrous. It’s practically already axiomatic within the fact that it’s been fifty years since Nixon started the War on Drugs and there’s still no end in sight. The War on Drugs, despite it being a war on its own people, is longer than any war or conflict that America has been in with other countries combined. But there is a solution, and it definitely doesn’t need to keep going like this.

For one, our prison system is filled to its capacity, with 85% of its population in there for non-violent drug use. That’s right, they harmed no one safe themselves. And while that is a problem that we shouldn’t just ignore, we shouldn’t be putting them into prison so that they catch a felony charge. For once they do have a felony charge on their record it is that much harder for them to become productive members of society. The recidivism rate for drug users who go through the prison system is about 95%. Users that spend time, thusly, are pretty much guaranteed to go back out and use; either to die, or to be sent back to prison. But either way, even if you don’t care about these people’s lives, then you should at least consider the fact that we spend $15 billion each year to house these prisoners in taxes. That amount does not include the legal fees for the prosecutors, public defenders, judges, or the amount of money we pay law enforcement just to round them up, especially special agencies like the infamous DEA.

When users get out of prison, if they don’t make the fatal mistake of going back out, then they’ll need to find some form of sustenance. In a recession with almost 10% of our country out of work, it is guaranteed that a drug user with a felony on their record is not going to find a job. So, more than likely, they go on welfare. Another system in which more tax money is spent. All in all, while it can’t necessarily be determined exactly how much of tax payers’ money goes into sustaining drug users and rehabilitated drug users with records, it can reasonably be estimated that its within several hundred billions of dollars per year.

So what would be the solution that I was talking about earlier in the article? Easy, we take example from countries like Holland. Yes, the region that contains the infamous city Amsterdam, known for its relatively lax drug policy in comparison to other countries, and its general legalization of marijuana. Per capita, though, Holland has less drug users than any nation, especially the States, even when it comes to marijuana (despite it being legal there and illegal here). Why? Well, decriminalization has a blanket effect of making drug use less taboo, meaning that less people turn to it as a form of rebellion because of its general acceptance. How do you rebel against something that’s accepted by society? You can’t. Though it’s not that easy, either. Holland, rather than spending billions in imprisoning drug users, actually rehabilitates them and puts thousands of drug users into publicly sanctioned rehabs a year. I won’t lie to you, though. Even rehabs aren’t fail proof. It’s widely accepted by most rehabs that 75% of the users that go through them are going to relapse. But still, that’s about a twenty percent difference from sending them to prison. And hell, that number might very much improve if decriminalization became the norm within the States.

Of course I’ve heard all the arguments before, you know, that we’re not Holland or Canada, and that decriminalization just wouldn’t work in the States. But that’s bullshit. Our system now isn’t working when it comes to eradicating drug use because it’s purely based on the flawed ideology that drugs can be swiped under the rug. They can’t. Not fifty years ago, not now. I mean, it’s not even really an argument to say that we can’t adopt systems that have worked in other countries, especially when considering our Constitution and Bill of Rights is based off what old British and French philosophers said, our economy takes note from John Maynard Keynes (Keynesian economics) who was British, and we virtually pride our country on being the melting pot that Tocqueville described almost two hundred years ago. To say that anything is unanimously American would vastly discount the amount of imported ideas and laws we’ve established within our system. It’s also kind of like saying, yeah, history is cyclical, but somehow America is just so great that we’re not really affected by that cycle. If another country can establish laws of decriminalization, then America could easily just as well.

With three of our past presidents even openly admitting to doing drugs in their past, isn’t it time that we pressure our lawmakers and congressmen into questioning the motives behind the War on Drugs and stop fighting ourselves. If not for the sake of the drug users who face the daily reality of this ridiculous war, then at least do it for yourself, the tax payer, who is spending such an egregious amount during a time when our spending has grown way out of proportion.