Fact 5: Drug control spending is a minor portion of the U.S. budget. Compared to the social costs of drug abuse and addiction, government spending on drug control is minimal.

• Legalization advocates claim that the United States has spent billions of dollars to control drug production, trafficking, and use, with few, if any, positive results. As shown in previous chapters, the results of the American drug strategy have been positive indeed—with a 95 percent rate of Americans who do not use drugs. If the number of drug abusers doubled or tripled, the social costs would be enormous.

Social Costs

• In the year 2000, drug abuse cost American society an estimated $160 billion. More important were the concrete losses that are imperfectly symbolized by those billions of dollars—the destruction of lives, the damage of addiction, fatalities from car accidents, illness, and lost opportunities and dreams.

• Legalization would result in skyrocketing costs that would be paid by American taxpayers and consumers. Legalization would significantly increase drug use and addiction—and all the social costs that go with it. With the removal of the social and legal sanctions against drugs, many experts estimate the user population would at least double. For example, a 1994 article in the New England Journal of Medicine stated that it was probable, that if cocaine were legalized, the number of cocaine addicts in America would increase from 2 million to at least 20 million.

• Drug abuse drives some of America’s most costly social problems—including domestic violence, child abuse, chronic mental illness, the spread of AIDS, and homelessness. Drug treatment costs, hospitalization for long-term drug-related disease, and treatment of the consequences of family violence burden our already strapped health care system. In 2000, there were more than 600,000 hospital emergency department drug episodes in the United States. Health care costs for drug abuse alone were about $15 billion.

• Drug abuse among the homeless has been conservatively estimated at better than 50 percent. Chronic mental illness is inextricably linked with drug abuse. In Philadelphia, nearly half of the VA’s mental patients abused drugs. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that 36 percent of new HIV cases are directly or indirectly linked to injecting drug users.

• In 1998, Americans spent $67 billion for illegal drugs, a sum of money greater than the amount spent that year to finance public higher education in the United States. If the money spent on illegal drugs were devoted instead to public higher education, for example, public colleges would have the financial ability to accommodate twice as many students as they already do.

• In addition, legalization—and the increased addiction it would spawn—would result in lost workforce productivity—and the unpredictable damage that it would cause to the American economy. The latest drug use surveys show that about 75% of adults who reported current illicit drug use—which means they’ve used drugs once in the past month—are employed, either full or parttime. In 2000, productivity losses due to drug abuse cost the economy $110 billion. Drug use by workers leads not only to more unexcused absences and higher turnover, but also presents an enormous safety problem in the workplace. Studies have confirmed what common sense dictates: Employees who abuse drugs are five times more likely than other workers to injure themselves or coworkers and they cause 40% of all industrial fatalities. They were more likely to have worked for three or more employers and to have voluntarily left an employer in the past year.

• Legalization would also result in a huge increase in the number of traffic accidents and fatalities. Drugs are already responsible for a significant number of accidents. Marijuana, for example, impairs the ability of drivers to maintain concentration and show good judgment. A study by the National Institute on Drug Abuse surveyed 6,000 teenage drivers. It studied those who drove more than six times a month after using marijuana. The study found that they were about twoand-a-half times more likely to be involved in a traffic accident than those who didn’t smoke before driving.

• Legalizers fail to mention the hidden consequences of legalization.

• Will the right to use drugs imply a right to the access to drugs? One of the arguments for legalization is that it will end the need for drug trafficking cartels. If so, who will distribute drugs? Government employees? The local supermarket? The college bookstore? In view of the huge settlement agreed to by the tobacco companies, what marketer would want the potential liability for selling a product as harmful as cocaine or heroin— or even marijuana?

• Advocates also argue that legalization will lower prices. But that raises a dilemma: If the price of drugs is low, many more people will be able to afford them and the demand for drugs will explode. For example, the cost of cocaine production is now as low as $3 per gram. At a market price of, say, $10 a gram, cocaine could retail for as little as ten cents a hit. That means a young person could buy six hits of cocaine for the price of a candy bar. On the other hand, if legal drugs are priced too high, through excise taxes, for example, illegal traffickers will be able to undercut it.

• Advocates of legalization also argue that the legal market could be limited to those above a certain age level, as it is for alcohol and cigarettes. Those under the age limits would not be permitted to buy drugs at authorized outlets. But teenagers today have found many ways to circumvent the age restrictions, whether by using false identification or by buying liquor and cigarettes from older friends. According to the 2001 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, approximately 10.1 million young people aged 12-20 reported past month alcohol use (28.5 percent of this age group). Of these, nearly 6.8 million (19 percent) were binge drinkers. With drugs, teenagers would have an additional outlet: the highly organized illegal trafficking networks that exist today and that would undoubtedly concentrate their marketing efforts on young people to make up for the business they lost to legal outlets.

Costs to the Taxpayer

• The claim that money allegedly saved from giving up on the drug problem could be better spent on education and social problems is readily disputed. When compared to the amount of funding that is spent on other national priorities, federal drug control spending is minimal. For example, in 2002, the amount of money spent by the federal government on drug control was less than $19 billion in its entirety. And unlike critics of American drug policy would have you believe, all of those funds did not go to enforcement policy only. Those funds were used for treatment, education and prevention, as well as enforcement. Within that budget, the amount of money Congress appropriated for the Drug Enforcement Administration was roughly $1.6 billion, a sum that the Defense Department runs through about every day-and-a-half or two days.

• In FY 2002, the total federal drug budget was $11.5 billion.

• By contrast, our country spent about $650 billion, in total, in 2000 on our nation’s educational system. And most of us would agree that it was money well spent, even if our educational system isn’t perfect. Education is a long-term social concern, with new problems that arise with every new generation. The same can be said of drug abuse and addiction. Yet nobody suggests that we should give up on our children’s education. Why, then, would we give up on helping to keep them off drugs and out of addiction?

• Even if drug abuse had not dropped as much as it has in the last 20 years — by more than a third — the alternative to spending money on controlling drugs would be disastrous. If the relatively modest outlays of federal dollars were not made, drug abuse and the attendant social costs ($160 billion in 2000) would be far greater.

• On the surface, advocates of legalization present an appealing, but simplistic, argument that by legalizing drugs we can move vast sums of money from enforcing drug laws to solving society’s ills. But as in education and drug addiction, vast societal problems can’t be solved overnight. It takes time, focus, persistence – and resources.

• Legalization advocates fail to note the skyrocketing social and welfare costs, not to mention the misery and addiction, that would accompany outright legalization of drugs.

• Legalizers also fail to mention that, unless drugs are made available to children, law enforcement will still be needed to deal with the sale of drugs to minors. In other words, a vast black market will still exist. Since young people are often the primary target of pushers, many of the criminal organizations that now profit from illegal drugs would continue to do so.

• Furthermore, it is reasonable to assume that the health and societal costs of drug legalization would also increase exponentially. Drug treatment costs, hospitalization for long-term drug-related diseases, and treatment of family violence would also place additional demands on our already overburdened health system. More taxes would have to be raised to pay for an American health care system already bursting at the seams.

• Criminal justice costs would likely increase if drugs were legalized. It is quite likely that violent crime would significantly increase with greater accessibility to dangerous drugs — whether the drugs themselves are legal or not. According to a 1991 Justice Department study, six times as many homicides are committed by people under the influence of drugs as by those who are looking for money to buy drugs. More taxes would have to be raised to pay for additional personnel in law enforcement, which is already overburdened by crimes and traffic fatalities associated with alcohol. Law enforcement is already challenged by significant alcohol-related crimes. More users would probably result in the commission of additional crimes, causing incarceration costs to increase as well.