Statistics Of The War On Drugs

The numbers.

 Amount spent annually in the U.S. on the war on drugs: More than $51,000,000,000

According to a 2011 Report on the Global Commission of Drug Policy, “the United States estimates annual drug consumption, 1998-2008, shows a 34.5% increase in opiate use, 27% increase in cocaine use, and 8.5% increase in the use of marijuana” (Jahangir et al, 2011).

There is a drug arrest every 19 seconds in the U.S. Of the more than 1.6 million drug arrests in 2009, 82 percent were for possession alone.

The U.S. government estimates that more than 118 million Americans above the age of 12 (47 percent of the population) admit to using illegal drugs.

In four years, more than 35,000 people have been killed in violence related to Mexico’s war against the cartels that control the illegal drug market.

The Department of Justice says that the illegal drug market in the U.S. is dominated by 900,000 criminally active gang members affiliated with 20,000 street gangs in more than 2,500 cities, and that Mexican drug cartels now directly control illegal drug markets in at least 230 American cities

48 percent of U.S. high school students have used illegal drugs by graduation.

In America, national drug control spending on harsh enforcement strategies grew by 69.7 percent over the past nine years, while spending on treatment and prevention only grew by 13.9 percent.

According to a Gallup poll, 46 percent of Americans now favor legalizing marijuana, the largest amount of support in the firm’s over 40 years of asking the question. Other polls show that a majority of Americans (52 percent) now support legalizing and taxing marijuana.

Every day, more than 50 people die of unintentional drug overdoses in the U.S.

Despite being the birthplace of the global “war on drugs” and having some of the harshest drug penalties, the U.S. has the highest marijuana and cocaine use rates in the world.

According to The National Organisation For Marijuana Law Reform New Zealand, "New Zealand now has the highest arrest rate in the world for cannabis “crimes”, yet despite this, New Zealand now has, along with Australia, the highest teenage cannabis use rate in the world!"

Prohibition has clearly failed to prevent drug use in New Zealand.

 Official statistics from Auckland University’s Alcohol and Public Health Research Unit show half of New Zealanders aged 15-65 have tried cannabis, and one-in-six define themselves as regular users. That’s about 1.5 million ordinary Kiwis who have ignored the law and tried cannabis, and around 400,000 who continue to use it. https://norml.org.nz/about/

FIVE STARTLING STATISTICS ON THE DRUG WAR: http://reset.me/story/five-startling-numbers-failed-war-drugs/