Libertarians: War on Drugs

The War on Drugs is a government sponsored conflict that has been raging for nearly five decades, costing approximately $51 billion annually, and incarcerating over one million nonviolent American citizens every year. One would think that with so much spending, the Drug War is slowly but surely being won. Sadly, nothing could be further from the truth. Despite allocating a substantial amount of taxpayer dollars to combat drug use, little impact has been made on the illegal drug trade in the United States. In fact, as drug war spending has steadily increased over the years, the drug addiction rate has remained constant.

Some will argue that even though the cost is great, we have a “moral imperative” to fight drugs in our communities. Whether you agree with this sentiment or not, this strategy of incarcerating non-violent drug offenders is extremely ineffective. The United States has an average recidivism rate of around 60%. This means that 60% of the individuals who are incarcerated on drug related offenses will return to correctional facilities within three to five years of release. This means that of the $51 billion spent on drug enforcement and incarceration, over $30 billion is wasted on hunting down and locking up individuals who will simply end up back in the system.

Putting aside the terrible return investment, the toll on human capital is devastating. These Nonviolent offenders are thrown into overcrowded jails, given little to no addiction treatment, and are expected to be “rehabilitated” after an arbitrary amount of time. These men and women lose jobs, families, and opportunities that cannot be retrieved— often leaving no other path to take but the one that landed them in jail in the first place. At the very least, these drugs need to be decriminalized in order to slow this vicious cycle of wasteful spending and re-offense.

If the failure of the ‘War on Drugs’ has taught us one thing, it is that the demand for drugs will remain constant regardless of government prohibition— a lesson I thought we had already learned after the prohibition of alcohol. But, nearly one hundred years later, we are making the same mistakes. If we want to keep this $1 trillion  failure from growing any larger, it is time to swallow our pride, bury our fear, and make some changes to drug policy. Slowly legalizing key indicator drugs will result in lower prison populations, less violence, and the reallocation of resources towards properly treating addicts in place of locking them up. The fears we have concerning drug policy will slowly disappear with the expansion of personal liberty, not the restriction of it.

— Ian Nemelka is a senior majoring in political science. He is the President of Aggies for Liberty, a university club focused on student education and activism. He is passionate about food, legos, liberty, and his fraternity.