Obama's Drug Czar Favors Law Enforcement Above Treatment
(The Raw Story via InfoWars.com) “We’re not at war with people in this country,” [US Drug Czar Gil] Kerlikowske told The Wall Street Journal in May.
However, if the Office of National Drug Control Policy’s (ONDCP) budget for fiscal year 2011 is to be believed, Kerlikowske was full of hot air.
According to 2011 funding “highlights” released by the ONDCP (PDF link), the Obama administration is growing the drug war and tilting its funds heavily toward law enforcement over treatment.
The president’s National Drug Control Budget also continues the Bush administration’s public relations tactic of obscuring the costs of prosecuting and imprisoning drug offenders. “Enron style accounting,” is how drug policy reform advocate Kevin Zeese described it, writing for Alternet in 2002.
The budget places America’s drug war spending at $15.5 billion for fiscal year 2011; an increase of 3.5 percent over FY 2010. That figure reflects a 5.2 percent increase in overall enforcement funding, growing from $9.7 billion in FY 2010 to $9.9 billion in FY 2011. Addiction treatment and preventative measures, however, are budgeted at $5.6 billion for FY 2011, an increase from $5.2 billion in FY 2010.
In short, the Obama administration’s appropriations for treating drug addiction are just short of half that dedicated to prosecuting the war.
The problem, of course, is that when you have declared drugs to be illegal, you must expend resources to arrest, try, and convict the people who manufacture, transport, sell, buy, and use drugs. It’s really less about the the people who use drugs than it is about the people whose jobs depend on arresting the people who use drugs.
We’re in the middle of a recession. Jobless numbers are through the roof. If marijuana were regulated like alcohol or tobacco, you suddenly add a whole bunch of DEA, police, prosecutors, wardens, guards, and more to the unemployment line. Then add in the young people who have found marijuana growing and dealing to be the only living wage job they can find, now suddenly unemployed by marijuana re-legalization, and you’ll see unemployment figures that would guarantee an Obama re-election defeat in 2012.
Yes, a legal marijuana market would open up many jobs and industries and tax revenues heretofore unrealized, but transitioning to that market is going to take time. In the meantime, what jobs are open for former drug cops and pot dealers?
We bring this up to temper our disappointment in a man who in 2004 said our “War on Drugs is an utter failure and we need to rethink and decriminalize our marijuana laws” but in 2010 has turned into just another prohibitionist president.
(Find more information on this contradiction between the Obama Administration’s lip service toward treatment over incarceration, complete with quotes and informative graphs, at Pete Guither’s informative DrugWarRant blog.)
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Typical rehab programs cost $20,000 per month.
http://hubpages.com/hub/The_costs_of_drug_rehab_How_to_pay_for_drug_rehab
A state prosecutor makes around sixty grand a year and should be able to put hundreds of addicts in jail per month. Feeding inmates is the only real overhead and probably costs less than $10 per day. The big, big, big advantage is drugs are not available in jail. While the vast majority of drug addicts are stoned within hours of leaving a $20,000 rehab center's nearly useless 3-4 week program, a 90 day stay in jail would leave the addict clean and sober for what is probably the first time in his adult life.
In fact, the only thing most rehab centers do is tell addicts to join free self help groups when they get out. That's something a judge can do, and without spending a month saying "pretty please".
Spending over $5 billion a year on programs that have a track record for universal failure is a waste of money . Tie the dopers down for a few days until the worst of the twitching stops, then put them in jail long enough to wring them dry. Keep doing it until the message sinks in. Problem solved.
We've been doing that for 70 years in this country. What makes you believe that it will suddenly start working? Albert Einstein once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results. That pretty much sums up cannabis prohibition .
Face it - its inevitable. Public support for cannabis prohibition increases at an average rate of 1-2 % per year. Its a simple demographics. The only age group strongly opposed to legalization is the 65+ crowd. Its only a matter of time. Your view is already the minority view on the coasts. It will start in places like California, Oregon, Washington, and Massachusetts, and spread from there. The country will be much better off when cannabis prohibition is repealed.
Do you honestly think that putting drug addicts and dealers in the same place will result in clean and sober prisoners. Any drug you can get on the street is readily available in our prison system. It may cost more but it is available.
Why do you think addicts are told to join free self help groups? Could it be because there is no funding!
No seriously, you are clearly under the influence of something yourself if you believe that prisons are drug free. While your at it why don't you say that prisons rehabilitate and are safe !
Should we assume from your comments that you've spent a LOT of time in prison ?
I'd assume from the context that the references are to heroin addicts, or at least more so than casual marijuana users. Do you really believe a heroin addict could support a full blown habit in jail? That's hard to imagine for someone not able to engage in the sort of activities typically required to raise that kind of cash. Quite frankly, I don't believe it. If you've spent a lot of time behind bars, perhaps you know more about it than I do, but if you're basing your opinion on urban legends, I'd respectfully suggest you examine more credible sources.
I've met a few people over the years who were involved in those hair brained methadone programs. Those programs are a bad joke. As soon as anyone tries to taper them off the stuff, they just hit the streets to top it off with their usuals.
Did you know heroin was invented by Bayer and was originally marketed as a cure for morphine addiction? Amazing but true. That's about how the methadone programs work . Another interesting bit of trivia is that Bayer is the world's top producer of the cataylist used to turn opium into heroin.
Regardless of whether the present regime in Washington DC supports legalization ,regardless of how much the pharmaceutical companies, banks and law enforcement organizations want to keep marijuana illegal and schedule 1,the American people will take their right to the pursuit of happiness back.
If they want to keep building prisons and locking people up,go ahead. It has not and will not deter anything. The sad part is all the billions of dollars wasted and peoples lives ruined over a plant mother nature put here. This is not a man made drug someone cooked up in a laboratory or distills from grains,but a natural therapeutically active plant that shows possible cancer treatment and blocking attributes. And still,our government ,in all their wisdom,refuses to allow studies of it as a medicine .
Their refusal to verify or refute marijuana's medical attributes
should tell Americans that they are hiding something.
!4 States and the US Department of Justice recognize marijuana
as a medicine,and more states are enacting laws for medical marijuana every day and the ONDCP and DEA still want marijuana kept on schedule 1. WHY?????
Possibly because over 80% of their 15 billion dollar budget is justified by marijuana.