

The War on Drugs Has Failed - btilly
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsk8R_j5zzg

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btilly
Sorry for posting an hour long video on a subject that looks like it is a
libertarian rant. It is not.

Here is a td;lr version.

This is a Google Tech Talk by the executive director of Law Enforcement
Against Prohibition, Neill Franklin. It makes a clear case that the war on
drugs is a very expensive failure. After decades of enforcement we have an
unprecedented fraction of our population behind bars (no other country is
close, and drug arrests are the vast majority of our prisons), have spent
enough to cover health care (1 trillion dollars), have failed to reduce the
availability of drugs (judging from price and purity, availability has never
been better), have made the drug cartels rich (500 billion/year is likely an
underestimate), have killed large numbers of people (tens of thousands per
year), have created a tremendous amount of violent crime, and have failed to
change the fraction of the population that is addicted. (It is 1.3% today. It
was 1.3% 40 years ago. And it was 1.3% in 1914 back when heroin was sold in
pharmacies.)

Amusing data point. Before he presented any facts he asked the audience of
~150 people working for Google how many thought that the war on drugs is
working. Not one did. The fact that the war is a complete failure is not news.
What I found interesting was the presentation of statistics that thoroughly
demonstrate this.

