The Drug War's dirty deal

With more than 2 million people locked up, the U.S. prison population is now the largest in the world, much of it the result of the war on drugs. At over 700 per 100,000 residents, for example, the U.S. incarceration rate is more than seven times higher than the rate of incarceration in Germany or France. On top of the price of inequitable enforcement and the $33 billion that the U.S. government is spending annually to enforce drug prohibition, Miron contends that the war on drugs has been more effective in fostering corruption among public officials than in reducing drug consumption. [more]