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InvisibleveggieM

Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,538
Costs in the ‘war on drugs’ continue to soar * 1
    #28382381 - 07/02/23 10:16 AM (10 months, 12 days ago)

Costs in the ‘war on drugs’ continue to soar
July 2, 2023 - NBC News

The numbers keep going up, from prosecutions to lives lost to government spending

   


It’s been called the nation’s longest war, and more than five decades in, many Americans wonder what they have gotten out of the time and money spent on the so-called “war on drugs.”

A variety of measures suggest that the policies that have shaped it have had limited success and produced uneven impacts across the country. Some groups have been hurt more than others, particularly African Americans, but few seem to have seen real benefits.

Starting with basics: The war on drugs has not only been long, it has been expensive. 

This summer, the war turned 52 years old. It was June of 1971, when President Richard Nixon declared that drug abuse to be “public enemy number one” that required a “new all-out offensive” and additional government funding.

Since then, the country has spent more than a trillion dollars fighting drug use, according to some estimates. That includes more than $39 billion spent by the federal government in 2022 alone, according to the General Accounting Office. 

And, of course, illegal drugs and drug abuse are still very much with us. In 2021, a Gallup poll found 64% of Americans said the nation’s drug problem was “extremely serious” or “very serious,” though the primary scourge changes. In the 1980s cocaine and crack cocaine were the dominant stories. In 1989, President George H.W. Bush held up a bag of crack cocaine during his first White House address and announced the war on drugs would be a primary focus on his time in office.

But in the last few years, opioids have become a key focus of anti-drug efforts, and with good reason: Overdose deaths from them have skyrocketed, and synthetic opioids such as fentanyl have become the chief culprit. 

Since 1999, opioid overdoses have gone from killing 2.9 people per 100,000 to more than 21 per 100,000. And synthetics have gone from causing 0.3 overdose deaths per 100,000 people to more than 17 per 100,000.

Those deaths have become a big part of the discussion of “deaths of despair” in America — deaths from overdose, alcoholism and suicide. Much of that conversation has focused on older white Americans, particularly in rural areas. But that story has been changing in recent years. 

Since 2018, African Americans have seen their opioid overdose death numbers surge past those of other racial and ethnic groups.

In 2018, white Americans had a higher opioid overdose death rate than the nation, 18.8 per 100,000 people, versus 14.6 for Americans overall and 14.1 for African Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control. 

But just three years later, the rate for African Americans had more than doubled to 33.5 per 100,000 population, according to the CDC. The figure for white Americans had climbed as well, to 28.4 per 100,000, and the overall figure had climbed to 24.7. But increases for Black Americans truly stood apart.

In that same time, the number of arrests for fentanyl trafficking went through the ceiling. 

In 2018, there were 422 people convicted for fentanyl trafficking, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission. By 2022, the number had climbed to more than 2,300, an increase of 461%. 

The Southern District of California led the way with 207 traffickers sentenced, but the convictions came from everywhere, and 98% of traffickers across the country received prison time, with an average sentence of 64 months. The offenders were overwhelmingly U.S. citizens (88%). 

And the numbers show that African Americans are taking the biggest hits from drug enforcement as well. Black offenders make up the largest share of fentanyl convictions, according to the Sentencing Commission.

About 41% of offenders were Black, while about 39% were Hispanic. White people made up a much smaller portion of fentanyl convictions, about 19%.

In other words, overdose deaths and convictions have surged, with African Americans bearing the brunt of the epidemic on both points. And, at the same time, the larger problem only seems to grow.

In some ways, that’s the story in the data: The numbers suggest the 50-plus year war on drugs has become a symbol of the government’s inability to solve chronic problems — and how its efforts to fix those problems sometimes create others. 

The pattern has become hard to ignore. Administrations of both parties consistently pledge resolve. Spending on the war on drugs increases, and convictions rise, but so does usage. And, in the end, the broader story doesn’t really change.

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Offlinethirtygoats
Male
Registered: 12/29/11
Posts: 1,992
Last seen: 2 months, 20 days
Re: Costs in the ‘war on drugs’ continue to soar [Re: veggie] * 1
    #28383237 - 07/03/23 06:57 AM (10 months, 11 days ago)

Well, being able to use a drug that "could" be meth/amphetamine is the reason why I've been able to avoid doing anything insane, or anything that would hurt others.

When people cannot stimulate dopamine, they become people like Ted Bundy, Hitler, Dahmer, etc. Why should it be okay for a person to become unhealthy enough that they commit mass murder. It's not okay, but I often hear people who've committed serious crimes try to avoid taking responsibility for it by claiming they used a drug... and the cops don't believe them, but it doesn't matter. Cops use that as more reason to treat drug dealers like they hate them and want to kill them.

It's a war on happiness, health, and personal freedom.

Edited by thirtygoats (07/03/23 07:05 AM)

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Invisibledurian_2008
Cornucopian Eating an Elephant
 User Gallery


Registered: 04/02/08
Posts: 18,037
Loc: Raccoon City
Re: Costs in the ‘war on drugs’ continue to soar [Re: thirtygoats]
    #28383628 - 07/03/23 12:37 PM (10 months, 10 days ago)

Quote:

Arnold Schwarzenegger said:
My relationship to power and authority is that I’m all for it. People need somebody to watch over them. Ninety-five percent of the people in the world need to be told what to do and how to behave.





In spite of countless viable alternatives to the greenback, we have refused to acknowledge the psychological need of that 95% to be dominated, on structured time, as a force of nature.

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