LAW ENFORCEMENT AGAINST PROHIBITION

After three decades of fueling the U.S. war on drugs with over half a trillion tax dollars and increasingly punitive policies, our court system is choked with ever-increasing prosecutions of nonviolent drug violations and our quadrupled prison population has made building prisons this nation's fastest growing industry. We have imprisoned more than 2.2 million of our citizens and every year we arrest an additional 1.6 million for nonviolent drug offenses - more per capita than any country in the world. The United States has 5 percent of the population of the world but 25 percent of the world's prisoners. Despite all that, illicit drugs are cheaper, more potent, and easier to get than they were 30 years ago. Meanwhile people are still dying in our streets and drug barons continue to grow richer than ever before. This scenario must be the very definition of a failed policy.