How much is the war on drugs costing the taxpayer? in policing and prisons? Americans need to change the drug laws. Portugal legalize all drugs and drug use has declined. Even though pot and alcohol is legal many people don't get drink on whisky everyday. since it's a recession, it's not about reducing taxes but reducing gov't expenditures..prisons and war on drugs....one state in kansas or some spent 2 million dollars /year in finding pot growers an burning the plant. pot is same as whisky. that is 2 miillion dollar gov't waste when california is growing pot..and all the prisons costing 30,000/year in prisons. cut stupid gov't spending like the war on drugs...it ain't working for 50 years...only recently like the 90's and 80's have drug us and organize street gang scene has been this bad...the drug scene in the 60's was nothing like it is today. neighborhoods are filled with gangsters property value drop and people leave urban cities because of too much crime on wall street. crime in the city is bad because it lowers property values and increase gov't spending in policing and prisons..and 50% of crimes is drug related. 30% of city budget for policing drug related crimes crime is bad for business too..insurance goes up if business get burgularized too much and people don't shop at crime riddent neighborhoods.
If the US government legalized coke and taxed it, they could pay of the deficit in a few short years.
Often times, you get less time for murdering someone in this country compared to selling narcotics. The United States has the highest per capita prison rate in the world and it's growing exponentially. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States
It's funny. In places of the world where drug use is decrimanised, drug use is usually lower. Holland has one of the lowerest rates of marijuana usage in the world.
The only thing the current drug policy has accomplished is incarcerating people for outrageous lengths of time and employing personnel to build and run prisons. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Relative_Incarceration_Rate.png The "Three Strikes Law" in California has locked people up for a period of 25 years to life for petty crimes like stealing video tapes and cookies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_strikes_law Welcome to America. Don't get sick and for crying out loud, do not steal cookies!
prove it...show us the math. Only about 1% of the population uses cocaine(3 million people). To pay off the deficit in just 10 years, those users would have to be paying about $40,000 per month in cocaine tax and thats not even adding in the cost of the product. If you are spending that much money on coke every month, you would be dead by the end of the week. Hey...maybe we should legalize it then....all the cokeheads will die in a week and the war on drugs will be over.