For the first eight months of 2007, the federal and state governments spent over $33,000,000,000 in their efforts to detect and prosecute drug related offenses! During that time, almost 1,030,000 people were arrested in this country for a drug-related offense, which equates to one arrest every 30 seconds. Of those people, 514,204 were arrested for a marijuana-related offense.



Today, we imprison more of our brothers and sisters than any other country in the world, including China, the Soviet Union and South Africa. In November 2006, the U.S. Department of Justice disclosed that one of every 32 people in this country, which is a total of 7 million people, are in prison, on probation, or on parole. In 2003, 55% of all federal prisoners had been convicted of drug-related offenses. Inexplicably, federal sentences are longer for drug-related offenses than for violent felonies, including arson, manslaughter, weapons , extortion or racketeering.

By some projections, the cost of placing a drug dealer behind bars is approximately $450,000, including the cost of investigation, arrest, prosecution and a presumed mandatory prison term of five years. http://www.druglibrary.org. The government spends more money to investigate and incarcerate drug offenders than to educate our children. The cost per year, just for incarcerating these prisoners, is 3 billion dollars. At one point, in the last few years, Colorado law-makers diverted $59,000,000 originally dedicated to its colleges and universities into paying for prison expansion. Since there are over 20 states under federal court orders to reduce prison over-crowding, it is highly unlikely that our education system will receive the financial attention it so desperately needs.

How did this happen? How did it come to pass that this country which is considered by most to be the "land of the free" and the most progressive of all countries in the world, has committed itself to condemning a vast majority of its citizens to the dark, dangerous and desperate dungeons that law enforcement officials call correctional facilities? The answer is simple, it is the so-called "war on drugs".

The "war on drugs" is not a new political or social phenomenon. It is as old as the commercial proliferation of drugs which began centuries ago. One of its first landmarks was the Opium Wars, where, in the 1880's, the United States attacked China to block the exportation of opium to our country.

The newest version of the "war on drugs" began in the late 1960's, at a time when the Vietnam War was straining the country, both socially and politically. The riots and protests that occurred during that time were emotionally unsettling and produced extremely high levels of anxiety and fear nationwide. The compulsion of the times moved Middle America to press the government to provide better police protection. It was not too long before the "war on drugs" began to compete with the "cold war" in political effort and affect. The mere suggestion that a political candidate was soft on crime spelled certain disaster. Newspapers and other media sources fueled the flames of public anxiety. Some say that this media sensationalization was conceived to enhance circulation and to benefit others who profit from the mass-scale incarceration that soon followed. In 1968, Congress responded with a major anti-crime bill. Shortly thereafter, then-President Richard Nixon added drug dealers and violators to the list of America's greatest enemies. Even in it early stages, the "war on drugs" produced a significant jump in arrests. In 1964, the entire law enforcement community in the state of New Jersey had developed only 1,618 drug-related arrests. Six years later, there were approximately 23,000 arrests.

In the early 1970's, New York implemented sentencing standards that required drug offenders to receive the harshest penalties. The statute provided a mandatory 15- year term for possession of small amounts of narcotics. Throughout the 1980's lawmakers competed with one another to introduce ever-harsher penalties in the "war on drugs" and its larger counterpart, the "war on crime." The battle escalated into scorched- earth warfare with the introduction of crack cocaine, and a new wave of laws boosting penalties higher and higher soon evolved.

Consistent with the priorities created by this social hysteria, various states began to remove the discretionary prerogative historically provided to judges during the sentencing process. These new laws established mandatory prison terms, with parole disqualifiers for specific crimes, which required a judge to impose specifically defined minimum terms of imprisonment before an inmate became parole-eligible.

Copyright (c) 2008 Frank Luciano