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Originally Posted by jiffy
Devil's advocate here. How much money, drugs, cars, boats, homes, etc does the government confiscate from these "drug" dealers and offenders. Probably much more than 1Billion. It is probably a money making deal for the government and we pay the bill for the prison system.
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You need to differentiate between "drugs" and "pot."
The War on Drugs as a whole is a money pit. I seriously doubt that $1 billion in assets is seized every year in the US from marijuana alone. The big money is in cocaine and heroin/opiates. I can believe that they account for a lot more, simply because the profit margins in those fields are much higher (no puns intended).
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Originally Posted by Wikipedia
Determining the cost of the War on Drugs is complex. The U.S. government estimates it by calculating the amounts used to attempt to control the supply of illegal drugs, government employees involved in waging the war, and rehabilitation costs. This total was estimated by the U.S. government's cost report on drug control to be roughly 12 billion dollars in 2005. Additionally, in a separate report, the U.S. government reports that the cost of incarcerating drug law offenders was $30.1 billion, $9.1 billion for police protection, $4.5 billion for legal adjudication, and $11.0 billion for state and federal corrections. In total, roughly $45.5 billion was spent in 1995 for these factors.[1] It should be noted that the socioeconomic costs, as well as the individual costs (i.e. the personal disadvantages in income and career) caused by the incarceration of millions of people are not included in this number.
In comparison, in 1998 the total cost of the drug problem in America was estimated at $143.4 billion.[2] This number, however, includes socioeconomic costs (the financial disadvantage caused indirectly for society and economy by drug-abuse).
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I posted this because I wanted to show that the war on drugs - or more specifically marijuana - is not working.