According to a recent economic analysis of drug prohibition in the U.S., in 1987 American drug enforcement costs amounted to at least $10 billion ($10,000 million). Approximately half of this expenditure is by the federal government; half by state and local governments (Nadelmann 1989). As the U.S. military forces, never known for economizing, got more deeply involved in the "war," costs are bound to skyrocket- Michigan Senator C. Levin estimated military costs at $2 million per drug seizure; U.S. Navy costs at $360,000 per arrest (Marshall 1988b)! Already the country with the world's highest per capita prison population, the U.S. Sentencing Commission estimates that as a consequence largely of drug laws, the federal prison population will double or triple from the 50,000 current inmates to 100,000 or 150,000 in the next decade, half of whom will be incarcerated for drug law violations (U.S. Sentencing Commission 1987). Drug-related convictions have already become the leading cause of incarceration in the State of New York and elsewhere. As Prof. Nadelmann commented (Nadelmann 1989):
State and local governments spent a minimum of $2 billion last year to incarcerate drug offenders. The direct costs of building and maintaining enough prisons to house the growing population are rising at an astronomical rate. The costs, in terms of alternative social expenditures foregone and other types of criminals not imprisoned, are perhaps even more severe.
Not to mention the loss of tax revenues from employed drug offenders who lose their jobs and go to jail... forcibly transformed from taxpayers to expensive wards of the state! This massive misappropriation of taxpayer's money is enriching criminals, contributing to the spread of AIDS and hepatitis, hampering biomedical research, degrading the morals of our police personnel who succumb to corruption, contributing to lack of respect for authority, and abjectly failing in deterring the 20-40 million Americans who persist in using illicit drugs. If, instead of ceding control of the drug market to criminals who thereby become rich and powerful, the government were to legalize these drugs, the $10 billion loss would be converted to at least $10 billion in new taxes which could be used for drug education and treatment, along with the $10 billion saved by not criminalizing 10 or 15% of the U.S. population. Note that this policy change would represent at least a $20 billion benefit for federal, state and local treasuries, and could help reduce the federal deficit.
Far more important than monetary savings, however, is the fact that government could begin to exercise control over the market, instead of defaulting on its responsibilities and relinquishing control of the market to the criminal element. Let there be no mistake about it- government "Newspeak" aside, illegalizing drugs in no way "controls" the market. The government illegalizing drugs is turning its back on control, and leaving it to the black marketeers to control the market. The illicit merchants, not the government, determine purity and adulteration; the manufacturers, not the government, decide what products to sell and set prices. History proves that, besides being more economical, legal regulation is more effective in reducing consumption. While the U.S. government illegalized alcohol consumption on a federal level during the period 1920-1933, the government of Great Britain opted for legal regulation- increased taxation, restriction of hours of sale and prohibition of sale to minors. While the U.S. death rate from cirrhosis of the liver (a consequence almost exclusively of alcoholism) dropped 50% during Prohibition (suggesting a 50% decline in alcohol consumption, it increased again to pre-Prohibition levels by the 1960s. In Great Britain, meanwhile, with legal control of a legal alcohol market designed to reduce consumption, the death rate from cirrhosis of the liver likewise declined 50% during the U.S. Prohibition period, then declined 50% again (to 25% of its previous high) by 1940, before settling in 1963 at a rate 33% of the 1914 rate (Vance et al. 1989). Besides raising taxes and avoiding waste of government funds and police resources, the British government was able to achieve equivalent or greater reductions in alcoholism under legal control, than was the U.S. government, which abandoned control and fostered the rise in organized crime. Instead of wasting $10 billion a year on the "War on Drugs" which only exacerbates the problem and subsidizes crime syndicates, it is high time the U.S. government stopped abdicating its responsibility and began to attempt to control the use of drugs in American society.