Federal anti-drug spending, 1981-2009 (in billions)

Percentage of drug arrests targeting:

Share of possession arrests that are for:

Prison inmates getting drug treatment

from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #483, 4/27/07

 

 

This is so despite $31 billion spent on drug interdiction and crop control efforts since 1997, including $5.4 billion spent in Colombia -- the source of 90 percent of cocaine in the United States -- since "Plan Colombia" began in 2000.

 

The updated cocaine data fully reverse a short-lived price increase that the White House drug czar's office heralded in late 2005. That rise in prices and decline in purity, which received much media attention at the time, proved to be a less than impressive fluctuation, as skeptics at the time suggested would be the case.

 

The available evidence indicates that cocaine's continued low and falling prices are driven largely by ongoing robust cocaine supply, rather than by a slackening or collapse in demand.

 

The new cocaine price and purity estimates offer further evidence that the continued US emphasis on forced crop eradication, with "Plan Colombia" as its most visible and costly centerpiece, has failed to affect drug supplies at home.

Watch documentary, "Plan Colombia" online at: http://freedocumentaries.org/film.php?id=195

12 Feb 2009 Telegraph, UK - The Home Office has admitted that the street price of both cocaine and heroin has fallen by nearly half in the last ten years, making most illegal drugs cheaper than they have ever been. A line of cocaine is now cheaper than a pint of lager or a glass of wine, official figures have disclosed. Article at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/4602051/Cocaine-cheaper-than-lager-and-wine-as-drug-price-falls-by-half.html

Latin American Leaders Say U.S. Drug War a Failure
2-12-09 San Diego Union-Tribune by Stuart Grudgings, Reuters

RIO DE JANEIRO — The war against drugs is failing and the U.S. government should break with "prohibition" policies that have achieved little more than cram its prisons and stoke violence, three former Latin American presidents said on Wednesday.

 

The respected former presidents urged the United States and Latin American governments to move away from jailing drug users to debate the legalization of marijuana and place more emphasis on the treatment of addicts Former Colombian President Cesar Gaviria said there was no meaningful debate over drugs policy in the United States, despite a broad consensus that current policies had failed. "The problem today in the U.S. is that narco-trafficking is a crime and so any politician is fearful of talking about narco-trafficking or talking about policies because they will be called soft," he said.

 

Gaviria has joined with former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso and former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo to try to change the debate on drugs in Latin America, where trafficking gangs have killed tens of thousands of people and weakened democracies through corruption. . .  The presidents' commission released a report calling on governments to refocus policies toward treating users, move toward decriminalizing marijuana, and invest more in education campaigns. It said current policies were rooted in "prejudices, fears and ideological visions" that inhibited debate. . .  Organized crime has flourished around drugs and is now threatening the stability of Mexico, where a spiraling war between rival gangs killed more than 5,700 people last year. Article at: http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/feb/12/latin-american-leaders-say-us-drug-war-failure/