$15.5 billion this year alone, 2/3rds for ineffective law enforcement.
Hooray! The War on Drugs is over! It must be true; it’s in the Irish Examiner!
THE United States has “ended its war on drugs” and is now moving its focus to prevention and treatment, the US drugs chief has told top Irish drug officials.
President Barack Obama’s drugs adviser Gil Kerlikowske held a series of meetings yesterday with Drugs Minister Pat Carey, Garda Commissioner Fachtna Murphy and Department of Justice secretary general Sean Aylward.
Um… has anybody told the Irish that the drug czar (among others in our government) sometimes lies?
The former police chief said the US had formally ended its much heralded – and hugely expensive – “war on drugs”.
“We’ve talked about a ‘war on drugs’ for 40 years, since President Nixon. I ended the war,” said Mr Kerlikowske, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP).
The Obama administration is increasing its budget for demand reduction by 6.5%, bringing it to $5.6 billion (€4.5bn). But the US is still spending $15.5bn on supply reduction.
The Irish Examiner can’t even get the numbers straight. We’re spending $15.5 billion TOTAL on this War on Drugs that we’re not fighting anymore. $9.9 billion of that goes to law enforcement, eradication, and imprisonment. This is the same strategy we’ve pursued for forty years and spent one trillion dollars on with no measurable success whatsoever.
All Gil Kerlikowske has ended is the official use of the catchphrase “War on Drugs”. We still arrest over 850,000 Americans a year for marijuana. We still send SWAT teams into people’s homes, destroying their property and killing their pets, over marijuana. We still use federal resources to fight legal medical marijuana in the states that have it and to prevent the states that want to legalize from doing so. This is the same “Drug War Spam” being served up as “Demand Reduction Luncheon Meat”.
Contact your elected representatives and urge them to 'Stop Arresting Marijuana Smokers'. 
Change of voice will suggest forced treatment . This new “best practices” policy is a step towards science with soundness of research methodology,as the standard globally.
I think the tides are turning and california Will Tax and legalize and regulation some really good herb and cut a few hundred million on people going aroud the forests of california choppin down ganja plants. Great report! Go
! 
i wonder who causes more harm to society; someone peacefully smoking marijuana at home,or power addicts[politicians] who establish such laws,not caring how many people,pets are killed in SWAt raids,how many are now languishing in our prisons,how much tax money is spent on this failed prohibition… gee,hard choice-right?
Just reposted a Union-Trib interview with Kerlikowske where he attempts to clarify the “drug war is over” comments, but then he weighs in on Tax Cannabis 2010, the legalization measure in California. “You’re not going to eliminate the black market with the taxes on marijuana,” he says, and estimated tax revenues are based on a “foundation of sand.”
Which raises some obvious follow-up questions, like how the feds are going to eliminate the black market through continued prohibition and prosecutions. And how receiving no tax revenues from marijuana is better than establishing a system that encourages and actually rewards compliance with the law.
OMG, don’t get me started.
What a load of BS, do he seriously expect the public to buy this? Well they probably wil actually
The snake oil is in the fine print as usual. The idea of treatment being a focus is simply the drug court punishment strategy. More money for drug-free workplace methods as well. Many people caught up in random testing at work get a similar choice as the courts: “treatment” or prosecution/persecution.
The only difference in the private sector is that if you choose to go on probation with your job for 6-18 months, they wont list your point of termination being due to drug abuse. Many people assume a criminal record is the only thing that dissuades or follows you.. But in this recession especially, one cannot have anything referring to drug abuse hanging over one’s head.
Being forced out of a job by refusal of testing is not healthy for America and is often the last choice an individual can make. We all need income.
I still cannot fathom how people believe the strategy is not simply more of the same. The efforts to force drug treatment was just another spin off industry that has been in place for some time. Nothing new in the specifics of the strategy at all I might add. I find nothing in the written policy that shows the focus will be on education and harm reduction over law enforcement. Just like the budget reflects.
I know his job is to lie, but this is really overstepping even his job description to pursue this farce. We can rename their efforts but it is still war.