Time to end the other war


Budget cutting? Take a hatchet to the war on drugs, writes Joe Conason in this column in Slate.


Every year we throw away billions on a failed program to punish addicts -- an approach both candidates should know doesn't work. Today we spend well over $50 billion annually at the federal, state and local levels on a domestic war that has never achieved any of its objectives and never will. If either of the presidential candidates still believes that this is a worthwhile investment of our money, despite his own experience, it would be fascinating to hear him explain why.

How much money is that? In our new big-number currency, it come to 150 Iraq-Days. Or if you prefer, $500 per American household. That's a lot of DARE shirts! And it doesn't count all the lives wasted in prison, all the cops who could be out fighting crime, all the other crime that gets financed or fueled by the high price of drugs or the subversion of entire foreign governments by either gangs or terrorists who grow fat on American drug money.