America now spends twice as much money annually to combat illegal drugs as it spent fighting the Persian Gulf War, yet there is no evidence indicating that existing policies are either working or cost-effective, charge authors of a newly released study by the National Research Council.
“It is unconscionable for this country to continue to carry out a public policy of this magnitude and cost without any way of knowing whether, and to what extent, it is having the desired result,” said Charles Manski, chief author of the report, and a Board of Trustees Professor in Economics at Northwestern University. The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) commissioned the study in 1998.
According to the report, drug enforcement activities – which comprise the bulk of federal and state anti-drug efforts – have grown exponentially since 1980. Authors note that there are now 12 times as many drug offenders in state prisons than there were in 1980, and that police arrest approximately 1.6 million Americans per year on drug charges, three times as many as they did 20 years ago. Government funding to pay for these activities has grown from 1.5 billion in 1980 to nearly 20 billion today. Nevertheless, “the nation is in no better position to evaluate the effectiveness of enforcement than it was 20 years ago, when the recent intensification of enforcement began,” the report said.
Allen St. Pierre, Executive Director of The NORML Foundation, cited these conclusions as further evidence that existing anti-drug strategies – particularly criminal penalties on the use and possession of marijuana – must be re-evaluated. “Taxpayers spend between $7.5 and $10 billion annually arresting and prosecuting individuals for marijuana violations,” St. Pierre said. “Almost 90 percent of these arrests are for marijuana possession only. This is a clear misapplication of the criminal sanction and a tremendous waste of fiscal resources.”
Prepublication copies of the report, entitled “Informing America’s Policy on Illegal Drugs: What We Don’t Know Keeps Hurting Us,” are available online from the National Academy of Sciences at: http://www.nas.edu. The National Research Council is a branch of the NAS.
For more information, please contact Allen St. Pierre, NORML Foundation Executive Director, at (202) 483-8751.
