Counting the Costs of the Drug War

The costs of the war in Iraq can be measured daily in deaths, injuries and decreasing support for U.S. policies. But how do you measure the costs of America's other war -- the war on drugs?

Each year, the U.S. government spends more than $30 billion on the drug war and arrests more than 1.5 million people on drug-related charges. More than 318,000 people are now behind bars in the U.S. for drug violations. This is more than the total number of people incarcerated for all crimes in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and Spain combined.

At a May 6 forum sponsored by the Independent Institute, an Oakland, California, think tank, analysts tried to quantify the real costs of drug war. Have these efforts actually deterred drug abuse or reduced crime? Boston University economist Jeffrey A. Miron, who spoke at the forum, applied an economic analysis to determine whether drug prohibition is a more effective public policy than legalization -- which would tax and regulate drugs. Miron, author of the new book Drug War Crimes, says the true costs of prohibition should be measured not just by the billions of dollars spent for enforcement of drug laws, but the overall impact on drug consumption, crime, public health and unseen moral consequences.

One of the major goals of prohibition is to increase the cost of drugs and thereby reduce demand and drug consumption. But Miron says this approach has failed. He points out that the price of drugs has actually fallen by 80% in the past 25 years. Despite millions of drug arrests, Miron says prohibition has had a relatively small effect on both the supply and consumption of drugs. He says the government's claims of a fifty percent drop in consumption due to prohibition are exaggerated. "Prohibition reduces access of drugs to some people, but there is no evidence that suggests a large effect," says Miron.

Miron also disputes claims by the federal Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) that drug use makes people violent and contributes to crime. He says prohibition increases violence because people involved in the drug trade have no recourse to the legal system to settle their disputes and are more likely to settle it themselves with force. "There is no evidence that merely consuming drugs makes you go out and do criminal things," says Miron.

Throughout history, Miron says periods of escalating violence have been sparked by attempts to prohibit certain commodities such as drugs, alcohol, gambling or prostitution. In instances where prohibition does increase the cost of drugs, he says drug users are more likely to steal or rob to pay for drugs. Police efforts to curtail violence are often diverted to enforcing drug laws.

Miron also notes that the drug trade enriches only the sellers, who are exempt from paying taxes on their products or minimum wages to workers. Drug sellers are not required to engage in quality control, which leads to more overdoses and accidental poisonings, says Miron. And he notes that there are other social consequences that make prohibition more costly than the legalization. "Because prohibition is a victimless crime, there is strong incentive for police to impede civil liberties and do racial profiling," he says. Miron adds that resistance to needle exchange programs under prohibition also increases the spread of HIV.

The effects of drug use on third parties such as unborn children or those involved in drug-related traffic accidents are exaggerated, says Miron, and not significantly different from the negative effects of alcohol or forgoing sleep for late-night TV. As for those who think that drugs are inherently immoral, Miron argues that the concurrent violence, damage to civil liberties and decreased respect for law which follows prohibition have a larger negative moral impact on people who are innocent bystanders to the drug war. According to Miron, the paternalistic attitude that people need to be protected from themselves opens a Pandora's box of government intervention.