Reply #28: Yeah, billions... [View All]

[High Plains]

The federal drug war budget is about $20 billion a year (and those weasels don't even include the cost of housing all those federal drug prisoners--more than half of all federal prisoners) and the states spend roughly the same each year.

It's probably fair to assume that marijuana repression accounts for half of all drug enforcement--if not more--so we're spending about $20 billion a year to lock-up potheads. (Or we force them to go to drug treatment to avoid jail, and the drug czar then screams about how many people are in treatment for marijuana.)

Damn, what could we do with $20 billion extra each year? Heck, we could probably pay for a couple of weeks of the Iraq occupation, but there are more useful things, too.