US ALCOHOL AND DRUG POLICIES

It is interesting to compare the economic and social effects of U.S. drug policies with those for alcoholic beverages.

ALCOHOL
Through the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, the United States resolved in 1920 to ban the sale of alcohol.  It had some effect on consumption during the first couple of years of the Prohibition era, but by 1925 there were upwards of 100,000 speakeasy clubs serving liquor in New York City, alone.  And the Prohibition unleashed a vicious period of violent organized crime.  President Roosevelt saw the futility of it all and guided repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment through Congress in 1933.

Today, the U.S. Beer, Wine and Liquor industry posts annual revenue of around $45 billion, employs close to 170,000 people and pays in excess of $3 billion in wages.  Not including income taxes, government earns about $ 6 billion in annual tax revenues from the legal sale of alcoholic beverages.

Not that alcohol is not cause for social problems.  The United States is estimated to have in excess of 17 million alcoholics or persons with alcohol problems.

DRUGS
Due to its illegal status, reliable statistics about the underground drug industry are naturally hard to come by.  World wide its estimated value is $400 billion, with the United States as its single biggest market with a retail value probably around $ 70 billion.  About 60% of this goes on cocaine, 20% on heroin, 15% on marijuana and 5% on other narcotics.

There are around 17 million consumers of illegal drugs in the United States, coincidentally about the same amount of people estimated to have problems with alcohol.  Among those drug users there are around 4 million hard core addicts responsible for about 70% of all drug purchases.

During the years between 1920 and 1970, the U.S. incarceration ratios were stable at just under 0.2% of total population.  After President Nixon launched the "War on Drugs" in 1971, the incarceration ratio began rising steeply and steadily.  It had reached 0.8% of total population by 2008.  That would leave us with a current prison population of around 2.6 million, of which about 2 million would be in for drug related offenses if we take the old 0.2% core ratio as the base for other crimes.  The United States has by a wide margin the highest incarceration ratio in the world, nearly eight times higher than the average ratios of Europe and Canada.

During 2010 the Federal Government spent over $15 billion in consequence of the "War on Drugs", while state and local governments spent at least another $25 billion.

Does this make sense?