Posted on 01/24/2016 11:09:18 AM PST by big bad easter bunny
I have been thinking about drugs and all the different angles it effects life in America. So I did some research I want to share, these stats unfortunately only reflect the way things were about 5 plus years ago, there isn't a lot of current data out there.
We rarely think about the total cost on the war on drugs, especially in minority neighborhoods. Minorities are more likely to get busted for drugs because they are basically poor. If you have wealth your car, insurance and registration are likely to be good, cop has to let you go. You are also way more likely to have paid any fines and no warrants. If only wealthy and well maintained cars were pulled over and fully searched all sorts of people would be getting charged.
If you get convicted of a felony it is very hard to get a decent paying job. In essence you get banned from making really good money, legally. Wealthy people can afford attorneys, their outcome in the legal system usually comes out better than those who get a court appointed attorney.
Attorneys eat up billions defending, prosecuting and judging drug crimes.
Think of they pay for all the prison guards, their pensions, ,medical insurance,all the food, electricity, laundry, concrete, barbwire? Vehicles, there are thousands and thousands of costs to incarcerate people, it isa massive industry, millions of people make a lot of money because of the lagal system we have.
Percentage wise we have more people in prison than any other country! We have way more drugs laws than any other country!
All the pay and retirement costs for all federal employees who work drug crimes is immense, great than many countries out put, combined.
The cost of someone getting murdered because of drugs, loss of income to the family, cost of investigating, prosecuting, incarcerating times 20,000 a year, every year, year after yearwith no end ever in sight!
The biggest cost is too the kids, parents murdered, sometimes the kids, parents in jail, lack of parents have devastating effects on a child's outcome, often they just follow their parents footsteps because it is what they have been taught, as wrong as it is.
We certainly do have a huge drug problem in this country but almost all the damage occurs because of law enforcement. If the sitting president can publicly admit he was the head of the Chume Gang in Hawaii and did blow in college and be President, something is seriously wrong!
It's not just illicit drugs either, legally made pharmaceuticals are certainly doing their damage. Almost all the mass shooting in this country over the last 10 years have been committed by people prescribed psychotropic drugs.
The people taking legally mood altering drugs in the last ten years is up 200 percent. A lot of these people make really stupid decisions! Most kids who are fat are on these drugs, it is one of the side effects. Which then leads to all sorts of other expensive disorders costing more billions.
As a society I hope we have had the best intentions with all these laws we have passed, trying to contain the way we perceived a problem but no doubt we have paved a massive road to hell.
Millions of people take drugs of all kinds everyday and nothing happens, they just don't get caught. They are in every walk of life, from dishwasher to the tops of our government. It is part of the human condition, a lot of people like to change the way they feel. Many substances can damage us, make us behave badly, inspire us to do stupid things, harm our health but compared to the damage of prosecution, it ain't close. The more you prosecute the higher the profit for selling the drug. It is a perfect self fulfilling outcome.
The price of one ounce of good weed in California has gone from $400 to $100. The cost of Xanax for 90 tablets, around $15-17. When used properly, the patient will take either the pill or liquid form three to four times a day. However, an addict has to take up 20 to 30 pills a day in order to achieve the initial feeling because they have built up a tolerance. Street value of Xanax is 4-6 dollars, times 30 is very expensive, very profitable.
California has decriminalized weed, almost totally. The Federal government has been cracking down on pharmesuticals, especially opiates. Many of the people who were addicted to opiates can't get them or afford them because the price has skyrocketed. Heroin is much easier to get and way cheaper, over dosesof herion are becoming epidemic.
All of these problems spill into Mexico as well and cause tons more destruction.
My opinion on how to change it;
Commute millions of possession felonies for drugs. Amnesty for many people who are having their lives destroyed because of a drug possesion felony. Let them get good paying jobs, take care of their families and stop draining their bank accounts with all of their legals fees and fines.
Change the laws for drug possession, the only thing that works is treatment, change 30 percent of prisons into treatment facilities. Put treatment facilities everywhere, drug abuse is everywhere, help them! Less addicts will drive down the price of drugs, which will drive down the price, which will make selling them way less profitable, just like it did when proibition ended and in states where pot is legal.
Hold pharmaceutical companies accountable for their part in the distribution and destruction their drugs have and are causing. They should be footing the bill for clinics to treat people addicted to their creations.
Make prisons more humane, way to many people come out way worse than they go in. The way humans are treated in prison, what is allowed to go on in prisons is nothing short of barbaric! We should be ashamed!
Drugs are not the problem, it's obviously the legal system, time to fix it and stop our insane path of continual destruction. Once again if you can be prez and admit to doing blow, then these silly laws must go!
(US Drug Prisoners) "The United States leads the world in the number of people incarcerated in federal and state correctional facilities. There are currently more than 2 million people in American prisons or jails. Approximately one-quarter of those people held in U.S. prisons or jails have been convicted of a drug offense. The United States incarcerates more people for drug offenses than any other country. With an estimated 6.8 million Americans struggling with drug abuse or dependence, the growth of the prison population continues to be driven largely by incarceration for drug offenses." - See more at: http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Prisons_and_Drugs#sthash.1N1uiTnV.dpuf
(Estimated Number Of People In The US Sentenced To State and Federal Prison For Marijuana Offenses)
Total Federal Prisoners 2004 = 170,535 Total State Prisoners 2004 = 1,244,311
Percent of federal prisoners held for drug law violations = 55% Percent of state prisoners held for drug law violations = 21%
Marijuana/hashish, Percent of federal drug offenders, 2004 = 12.4% Marijuana/hashish, Percent of state drug offenders, 2004 = 12.7%
(Total prisoners x percent drug law) x percent marijuana = "marijuana prisoners"
Federal marijuana prisoners in 2004 = 11,630 State marijuana prisoners in 2004 = 33,186 Total federal and state marijuana prisoners in 2004 = 44,816
Note: These data only address people in prisons and thus exclude the 700,000+ offenders who may be in local jails because of a marijuana conviction. - See more at: http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Prisons_and_Drugs#sthash.1N1uiTnV.dpuf
Murder, most murders are drug related
(2014) Of the 1,561,231 arrests for drug law violations in 2014, 83.1% (1,297,384) were for possession of a controlled substance. Only 16.9% (263,848) were for the sale or manufacturing of a drug. - See more at: http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Crime#Data
"In our ongoing research about marijuana possession arrests in New York,1, we have found that a basic misdemeanor arrest for marijuana possession in New York City varied from a minimum of two or three hours for one officer, to four or five hours or even longer for multiple officers. - See more at: http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Crime#Data
"For a very low and conservative estimate, we used two and a half hours as a minimum average amount of time one officer spends making a marijuana possession arrest. We multiplied 2.5 hours by the number of lowest-level marijuana possession arrests (charged under NYS Penal Law 221.10) for each year since 2002 when Mayor Bloomberg took office. "The front cover of this report shows a graph with the number of marijuana arrests for each year from 2002 through 2012. In those eleven years the NYPD made a total of 439,056 possession-only arrests. Multiplied by two and a half hours of police time per arrest that equals 1,097,640 hours - or approximately one million hours of police officer time to make 440,000 marijuana arrests. That is the equivalent of having 31 police officers working eight hours a day, 365 days a year, for 11 years, making only marijuana possession arrests." - See more at: http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Crime#Data
(Prohibition and Homicide Rates) "The data are quite consistent with the view that Prohibition at the state level inhibited alcohol consumption, and an attempt to explain correlated residuals by including omitted variables revealed that enforcement of Prohibitionist legislation had a significant inhibiting effect as well. Moreover, both hypotheses about the effects of alcohol and Prohibition are supported by the analysis. Despite the fact that alcohol consumption is a positive correlate of homicide (as expected), Prohibition and its enforcement increased the homicide rate." - See more at: http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Crime#Data
(Effect of Medical Marijuana Legalization On Crime Rates) "In sum, these findings run counter to arguments suggesting the legalization of marijuana for medical purposes poses a danger to public health in terms of exposure to violent crime and property crimes. To be sure, medical marijuana laws were not found to have a crime exacerbating effect on any of the seven crime types. On the contrary, our findings indicated that MML precedes a reduction in homicide and assault. While it is important to remain cautious when interpreting these findings as evidence that MML reduces crime, these results do fall in line with recent evidence [29] and they conform to the longstanding notion that marijuana legalization may lead to a reduction in alcohol use due to individuals substituting marijuana for alcohol [see generally 29, 30]. Given the relationship between alcohol and violent crime [31], it may turn out that substituting marijuana for alcohol leads to minor reductions in violent crimes that can be detected at the state level. That said, it also remains possible that these associations are statistical artifacts (recall that only the homicide effect holds up when a Bonferroni correction is made)." - See more at: http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Crime#Data
(Treatment and Crime Rates) "Increases in admissions to substance abuse treatment are associated with reductions in crime rates. Admissions to drug treatment increased 37.4 percent and federal spending on drug treatment increased 14.6 percent from 1995 to 2005. During the same period, violent crime fell 31.5 percent. Maryland experienced decreases in crime when jurisdictions increased the number of people sent to drug treatment." - See more at: http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Crime#Data
(Sheriff's Offices with Drug Enforcement Units) "Nine in 10 sheriffs' offices regularly performed drug enforcement functions (table 29). Sheriffs' offices with drug enforcement responsibilities employed 90% of all local police officers. "Thirty-six percent of sheriffs’ offices operated a special unit for drug enforcement with one or more officers assigned full-time (table 30). A majority of sheriffs' offices serving a population of 250,000 or more residents had a fulltime drug enforcement unit. There were an estimated 4,031 officers assigned full time to drug enforcement units nationwide. The average number of officers assigned ranged from 27 in jurisdictions with 1 million or more residents to 2 in those with fewer than 50,000 residents." - See more at: http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Crime#Data
(HIDTA Accomplishments, 2010) "HIDTA initiatives identified 8,693 DTOs operating in their areas of responsibility, of which 2,968 were disrupted or dismantled in FY 2010. Nearly twoâ€thirds (64%) of these disrupted and dismantled DTOs were identified as part of a multiâ€state or international operation. In the process, HIDTA initiatives removed significant quantities of drugs from the market (detailed below) and seized $774 million in cash and $161 million in nonâ€cash assets from drug traffickers. Moreover, 44 percent of HIDTAs achieved an average cost per DTO disrupted or dismantled below program average. In 2010, HIDTA task forces seized 1.2 million kg of marijuana; 48.3 thousand kg of cocaine powder; 5.1 thousand kg of methamphetamine; 4.4 thousand kg of Ice; 7.3 thousand kg of heroin; and 7.7 million outdoor marijuana plants plus 241.9 thousand indoor marijuana plants." - See more at: http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Crime#Data
(Diversion and Fraud) "According to law enforcement reporting, some individuals and criminal groups divert CPDs [controlled prescription drugs] through doctor-shopping and use insurance fraud to fund their schemes. In fact, Aetna, Inc. reports that nearly half of its 1,065 member fraud cases in 2006 (the latest year for which data are available) involved prescription benefits, and most were related to doctor-shopping, according to the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud (CAIF). CAIF further reports that diversion of CPDs collectively costs insurance companies up to $72.5 billion annually, nearly two-thirds of which is paid by public insurers. Individual insurance plans lose an estimated $9 million to $850 million annually, depending on each plan’s size; much of that cost is passed on to consumers through higher annual premiums." - See more at: http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Crime#Data
Sec. 844. Penalties for simple possession [of Controlled Substances in the United States]
STATUTE (a) Unlawful acts; penalties It shall be unlawful for any person knowingly or intentionally to possess a controlled substance unless such substance was obtained directly, or pursuant to a valid prescription or order, from a practitioner, while cting in the course of his professional practice, or except as otherwise authorized by this subchapter or subchapter II of this chapter." "Any person who violates this subsection may be sentenced to a term of imprisonment of not more than 1 year ....." "if he commits such offense after a prior conviction under this subchapter or subchapter II of this chapter, or a prior conviction for any drug, narcotic, or chemical offense chargeable under the law of any State, has become final, he shall be sentenced to a term of imprisonment for not less than 15 days but not more than 2 years, and shall be fined a minimum of $2,500 ...." "if he commits such offense after two or more prior convictions under this subchapter or subchapter II of this chapter, or two or more prior convictions for any drug, narcotic, or chemical offense chargeable under the law of any State, or a combination of two or more such offenses have become final, he shall be sentenced to a term of imprisonment for not less than 90 days but not more than 3 years, and shall be fined a minimum of $5,000." - See more at: http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Crime#Data
(Federal Drug Enforcement) "Drug-related activities in the United States span a number of agencies. In addition to the DoD [Department of Defense] activities focused on drug trafficking discussed previously, a range of programs involving intelligence collection, analysis, and sharing are in place at a number of levels. The central actor in counternarcotics and, therefore, domestic intelligence activities in this area is the DEA [Drug Enforcement Administration]. The agency’s Intelligence Division manages a number of offices and programs that interface both with other agencies in the intelligence community (e.g., the division’s National Security Intelligence Section) and operations to support state and local law enforcement activities (such as Operation Pipeline, which provides training, communication, and analytic support to local law enforcement targeting private motor vehicles involved in drug trafficking, and Operation Convoy, its commercial vehicle counterpart). The Intelligence Division manages information fusion centers. For example, the El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC) is the major hub for collecting, analyzing, and disseminating drug related intelligence for all levels of law enforcement and government. It covers drug, alien, and weapon smuggling, as well as terrorism-related smuggling. To support state and local operations, the DEA has organized Mobile Enforcement Teams (METs) to assist state and local law enforcement facing particularly difficult drug-enforcement challenges. When requested by state and local law enforcement, the DEA will send a team to assist in investigation, intelligence collection and analysis, arrests, and prosecution." - See more at: http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Crime#Data
(Effect of Police Crackdowns) The Canadian Medical Association Journal published research on the impact of a police crackdown on a public illicit drug market in the Downtown Eastside (DTES) section of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The researchers found that:
"We detected no reduction in druguse frequency or drug price in response to a large-scale police crackdown on drug users in Vancouver's DTES. The evidence that drugs became more difficult to obtain was consistent with reports of displacement of drug dealers and was supported by the significantly higher rates of reporting that police presence had affected where drugs were used, including changes in neighbourhood and increases in use in public places. These observations were validated by examination of needle-exchange statistics.
"Our findings are consistent with those showing that demand for illicit drugs enables the illicit drug market to adapt to and overcome enforcement-related constraints. Although evidence suggested that police presence made it more difficult to obtain drugs, this appeared to be explained by displacement of drug dealers." - See more at: http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Crime#Data
(Law Enforcement Targeting of Racial/Ethnic Minorities) "Police departments deploy most patrol and narcotics police to certain neighborhoods, usually designated 'high crime.' These are disproportionately low-income, and disproportionately African American and Latino. It is in these neighborhoods where the police make most patrols, and where they stop and search the most vehicles and individuals, looking for 'contraband' of any type in order to make an arrest. The item that people in any neighborhood are most likely to possess, which can get them arrested, is a small amount of marijuana. In short, the arrests are ethnically- and racially-biased mainly because the police are systematically 'fishing' for arrests in only some neighborhoods, and methodically searching only some 'fish.'6 This produces what has been termed 'racism without racists.'" - See more at: http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Crime#Data
The use of alcohol and drugs can negatively affect all aspects of a person’s life, impact their family, friends and community, and place an enormous burden on American society. One of the most significant areas of risk with the use of alcohol and drugs is the connection between alcohol, drugs and crime.
Alcohol and drugs are implicated in an estimated 80% of offenses leading to incarceration in the United States such as domestic violence, driving while intoxicated, property offenses, drug offenses, and public-order offenses.
Our nation’s prison population has exploded beyond capacity and most inmates are in prison, in large part, because of substance abuse:
80% of offenders abuse drugs or alcohol. Nearly 50% of jail and prison inmates are clinically addicted. Approximately 60% of individuals arrested for most types of crimes test positive for illegal drugs at arrest.
Drug/substance abuse lands people in prison.
We’re simply warehousing criminals, not dealing with the underlying problem.
Its one that cops, prosecutors and judges are poorly equipped to treat.
We can’t jail our way of drug/substance addiction.
If you are poor, don’t waste your money on drugs/alcohol. That will only guarantee that you will stay poor. Don’t blame the police for your dug/alcohol problems. Take responsibility for your own mistakes.
Your advice will change nothing and you are saying only wealthy people should do drugs?
I’ve been preaching everything that you said for years and I applaud you for saying it better than I ever did.
Please check out LEAP (law enforcement against prohibition)
I would also like to point out that pain patients are some of the biggest victims of the WOD.
The press hypes ‘opiate overdose deaths’, but fail to report that more than half of those numbers are for heroin. Not the arthritic grandmother who follows the rules. It’s also come out that, when they get an OD, if the person has hydrocodone and heroin in their system at the time of death, they count that ONE person as TWO separate deaths.
Again, the man dying of MS or cancer is not doing heroin.
I asked one of my doctors if the government counted the suicides from a LACK of pain management and he said no. But there is a growing body of evidence that the increase in both veteran and senior citizen suicides are from exactly that.
They are casualties of the WOD as well.
Part of the problem, I am convinced, is the progressive cynicism and loss of innocence that has permeated society. IMHO, there is a 'group' psychology that has broad effects across society, and over the past few decades there has been a creeping increase in moral relativism, and a concomitant progressive loss of hope and belief in good.
I'm not talking about what you or I specifically believe is right, or what our specific beliefs are. I'm talking about a much more general belief and sense in society that charity is good, love is good, not lying is a virtue, manipulative self-serving behavior is bad, etc. The list is long, but all of it deals with a very general belief that if you try to live a good life and do good in the world, you are a success.
What we are left with in the absence of these values is the same sense of hopelessness that led to such a high alcoholism rate in the USSR. There is a loss of purpose and meaning, and drugs are just a way to avoid the depressive dreariness of life without meaning. So, the only real way to deal with it successfully is to restore hope and faith in society. Just my thoughts, as someone who has felt that hopelessness more than once.
As a parting comment, when as a society you see people repeatedly get away with bad acts, and even progress to high levels despite these acts, it erodes hope and faith in goodness. What a lot of politicians have gotten away with, including one who is running for the Presidency, erodes faith in justice, and this contributes to despair. In short, I think we've become a depressed society.
Legalize drugs. Give them away free. You eliminate the crime and cost to society
I’d recommend some thirty caliber therapy for the kingpins and their political enablers.
There is nothing new under the sun says the Good Book. Just as elected officials and judges once profited from prohibition, so are today’s drug lords intertwined with our political class
Were we wise to end Prohibition, or should we have continued that battle? (I say the former.)
“We can’t jail our way of drug/substance addiction.”
That’s very true but people get a lot of satisfaction seeing people punished for doing thing they don’t like.
Legalization vs. The War on Drugs
Prohibition vs. Repeal
I think the either/or choice is increasingly irrelevant. It is naive to believe the ruling class is going to correct a profitable problem.
Truly fixing this will require a correction/healing of the soul. Escapism and no hope are symptoms of a broken spirit.
Which wouldn't excuse supporting the wrong policy. (And the problem at least in its marijuana aspect is trending toward correction.)
Truly fixing this will require a correction/healing of the soul.
That is the ultimate solution, for which government force is no substitute.
Portugal did this several years ago. Enforcement funds went towards treatment Instead of incarceration and usage went down.
Interesting, though awkward. Appears to lump drug dealers in with drug users. Release them all seems to be the prevailing sentiment.
Making welfare checks and all other government benefits contingent on passing drug tests would offer much more incentive for staying off drugs.
True - but criminalizing alcohol or other drugs serves only to guarantee that dealers will stay rich.
Why this is not done is a travesty of justice.
“We certainly do have a huge drug problem in this country but almost all the damage occurs because of law enforcement. “
—
Yeah,right.
That’s where I stopped reading.
.
It’s a shame that almost 2 hours into a post that you obviously worked so hard on, there are less than 20 comments at the time I write this response.
As for me, I really don’t know the answer to your question, but my observation is that to punish people for doing what people have been doing since the dawn of man seems wrong.
IMO, the harsh criminalization has done nothing but make a societal problem worse. Anything and everything having to do with drugs, from law enforcement to prisons, courts and every other industry that’s related in some fashion to drugs and the people that use them has become such a behemoth that it will never go away unless and until this society as it’s presently constituted is destroyed and restarted.
It’s not going to be a popular idea here, but IMO, it would be less expensive and less damaging overall if any type of drug people wanted were made available for free, along with safe places to get as high as they may want as long as they don’t cause problems to others.
As it is now, people will do any kind of dangerous thing imaginable to feed their drug habit and in so doing, they put the rest of us at risk in their endeavors because we have what they need to get what they want.
If people want to medicate themselves to death, why fight it when it would be better for those of us who don’t want to don’t ever have to become involved with them?
It seems a much better use of my tax dollars to allow someone who wants to kill himself to do so as long as he leaves me alone otherwise.
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