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http://visualeconomics.creditloan.com/losing-effort-the-united-states-war-on-drugs/ I was thinking about this last night. It really baffles me why they end this War on Drugs so they can focus on treatment and enforcement of crimes. I live in Baltimore where this stuff is all around so its not like I dont see it every day. Police just want to keep the low hanging fruit of drug enforcement so they can keep getting more money from tax payers to target certain groups of people. Politicians are too selfish to look at the economics and science to make policies that would really work. The US spends about $15 BILLION dollars a year on drug enforcement. Imagine that $15 BILLION going to treatment / other real policing. Most of the property crimes in my neighborhood would disappear over night if crack heads could go somewhere safe to get their fix for free. No need to break into cars for change. No need to rip out people copper pipes for scrap money, no need to rob people on the street to get high. They could get a warm place to sleep so they're not on my front step in the morning. They wouldnt be building fires in abandoned buildings to stay warm at nihgt. That is just on the addict level. This doesnt even begin to touch on organized crimes (lots of latino gangs around here). Just like gangsters during prohibition, they wouldn't be able to survive in a marketplace where drugs were being given away in treatment centers or sold in the bar / pharmacy / dispensary. With gangs out of power, we'd see a drop in all of the initiation crimes, gang killings, turf wars, etc. In addition to the drug use and crime, housing drug offenders in prisons costs billions every year as well. So much money flows through this system its created a business of its own that feeds the politicians who make the laws that perpetuate the broken policies. Its been proven in Portugal that decriminalizing drugs + treatment reduced drug use by half (http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/07/05/ten-years-after-decriminalization-drug-abuse-down-by-half-in-portugal/) Prohibition simply doesn't work. We learned this as a nation in the first half of last century. Why can't we move on? Interesting note... Maryland is known as The Free State because during prohibition there were no state or local laws prohibiting alcohol and no enforcement by state or local police. The feds could still enforce the Federal laws though. During this time we had some of the lowest crime in our cities compared to other east coast cities.