Executive Branch

Houston-area journalist Clarence Walker reflects on the occasion of a trillion dollars spent on the failed US drug war.

No other has spent more money on the dope trade than our own U.S. Federal Government. Even the richest of drug barons and associated players, dead and alive, cannot or could not have competed with the avalanche of paperwork doled out by the government in its fight against this monster. Even the once ruthless - and now dead - Pablo Escobar and his Medellin Cartel, the Cali Cartel or the Mexican Drug Cartels cannot match the money they have earned from the drug trade with the amount the Federal Government has allocated for years in its battle to stem the flow of illegal drugs into America.
 
And what is the cost for our government in its fight against this narcotics epidemic, a war raged now for some four decades? By all means have a guess, but here is the figure according to The White House: One trillion dollars.

The war on drugs is the longest war the American government has ever fought, longer than World War II, the Cold War, the Korean War and  the Vietnam War. And even after 40 years, the battle to enforce the laws of the land that prohibits "getting high on dope", this poisonous, addictive trade continues to thrive with the ferocity of an earthquake across the planet. Quite obviously, there is no clear-cut victory in sight.

From the outset, if  the intent driving the war on drugs, beginning in 1970 under President Nixon's Administration, was to create a drug-free America, we can see that after the spending of a trillion dollars, culminating in millions of arrests, the creation of a burgeoning health care system with which to effectively treat addicts, and the billions spent on law enforcement's task of arresting drug dealers and the  prison system in housing the millions of nonviolent drug offenders alongside thousands who have brought violence and death, the "war on drugs" nevertheless remains a dismal failure.

In the aftermath of a couple very questionable DEA raids of medical marijuana providers, not to mention the nomination of notorious drug warrior Michele Leonhart to head the DEA, we're forced to question once again whether President Obama intends to abide by his pledge to tolerate medical marijuana in states that have legalized its use.