Earlier this week the US Department of Justice released their budget requests for 2011. The DEA’s budget request was over two billion. The National Drug Intelligence Center, employs about 340 people and does most of the computer intelligence work of the DEA by scanning seized computers from suspected drug traffickers. They are requesting $44,580,000 for 2011. The Criminal Division of the Department of Justice is asking for $39,680,000 specifically to reduce the threat, use and related violence of illegal drugs. The US Attorney’s office is asking for $733,322,000 specifically to pursue cases involving illegal drugs.
Did you think that all those forfeiture laws were just about making the DEA rich? Well, did you ever think that expenses relating to property seizures, management, and disposal including investigative expenses are pretty steep? The Departments of Justice’s assets and forfeiture fund will need $780 million to get that messy job done next year. The Interagency Crime and Drug enforcement, the people responsible for requesting military help if needed and working with other governments in cases of drug trafficking, like the Marc Emery case, is asking for $579,319,000.
The FBI would like to spend some $91 million of their $4.5 billion dollar budget on drug crimes. It is impossible to identify exactly how much of this requested budget will be solely devoted to marijuana. All illegal drugs are lumped together. Some will be spent on cocaine, meth-amphetamine and others, but we know that the majority of this budget will be spent on the number-one choice of illicit substances. Most of the 4 billion, 357 million, 129 thousand dollars of your money will be spent by the Federal Agents of the United States of America to persecute drug users. When it is all down in black and white it looks like the prohibition of cannabis use for American adults is really a jobs program for law enforcement. Maybe that explains why the police are compelled to let lawmakers know they are against cannabis law reform.
Repel the U.S. Code as national law.
Decriminalize pot. And lets start to talk about not taxing it either. The government will just make a mess of it anyway,
The war on drugs is a money making situtation for someone on the hill or it would of ended (prohabition of Cannabis) years and years ago.
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Corperations are against throwing money at a problem so why should the Feds do the same! I totally agree with ya Andromeda! Under the same reasoning, I don´t understand why more Republicans/conservatives are against the failed war on drugs, government spending is government spending, so why not ask for the stuff that doesn´t work to be cut out first!
What is funny is the biggest cuts to education made by states (Cali & NY) amount to about 2 billion. Maybe the DEA´s budget would be better invested there? I don´t want to live in a fu*kin country that thinks it is more important to throw people in jail than educate the next generation! Education > Police State! Build schools not prisons!
Drug prohibition is about the only thing I can think of where a failure to achieve stated goals (reduced illicit drug use in the population) results in the conclusion that you COULD have achieved those goals if you had MORE money. One year’s failure is then used to justify a bigger budget for the next year, which invariably ALSO ends in a failure to achieve stated goals and is then used to justify a bigger budget for the next year, rinse and repeat.
Abject failure is being viewed as a reason for an ever-increasing budget, the American taxpayers are footing the bill, and (otherwise) law-abiding citizens and citizens with health problems such as addiction are terrorized (using their own money!) by their own government and police force.
The graphic has a very nice post modern Thomas Nast look. Great work,
And I think that at this point, their fight is for survival, at least from their perspective anyway. They could lose as many jobs in the drug-war industries as are created by the emerging hemp and cannibis related industries.
They just don’t want to have to ask US for jobs.
If a greater majority of the public really understood how horrendous the war on drugs is and the disgusting amount of our money spent on it they just might wake the heck up.