The DEA focuses on federal drug offenders, the majority of which end up in federal prison. Unlike local law enforcement, where a drug arrest will end up, most likely, in a probation. What's a "federal drug offender" that is not a state drug offender, except those actually captured coming on the American shores?
Probation or not, over half of the space in federal prisons is wasted by cannabis offenders. That, right there is a money drain. Then we have the entire due process course from investigation to sentencing that costs money.
About 1% of the budget is spent on the WOD, about half of that at the border where they can use the additional help anyway.
I'd think it would be a lot more. Got a source?
I doubt seriously that if cannabis were dropped from the schedule, we would have a DEA as such.
I say decriminalize it all! Let adults do what they want and give life in prison to anyone who supplies a kid. If we do this, some will do till they die, literally. For others, being legal will ruin the appeal. Problem solved. We can spend the money on the deficit and the military.
"Probation or not, over half of the space in federal prisons is wasted by cannabis offenders."First, the space is not "wasted". These are scumbag drug traffickers and drug dealers. Good riddance to bad garbage. Second, the statistic is for all drug offenders, not just marijuana. Third, we have 2 million people in prison (state and federal) in the U.S. 77,000 of them are drug offenders in federal prison. Let's put things in perspective here, Chicken Little.
"I'd think it would be a lot more. Got a source?"
The federal budget is about $2 trillion. The federal WOD is about $20 billion (ie., 1%).
Under the 2003 WOD budget, a number of enforcement agencies were included. This skews the "supply/demand" budget split to 2/3 - 1/3. The 2004 WOD budget transfers some of the enforcement budget to other federal agencies, resulting in a "supply/demand" budget split of about 50-50.
This restructuring (detailed in the link) also reduces the ONDCP budget from $20 billion to $12 billion. The largest reduction, $5 billion, came from the removal of 10 accounts in the DOJ, the largest of which, $3 billion, was for the incarceration of federal prisoners.