pted to rid America of drink. The arguments against the War on Drugs are the same arguments that persuaded politicians sixty years ago to end Prohibition. Just as the movement to rid America of alcohol failed, so will the War on Drugs because social engineering works no better today than it did then.The War on Drugs has given birth to many of the modern day evils. The most widespread repercussion of the War on Drugs is the crime rate. In 1990, the number of people sent to state and federal prisons for drug offenses exceeded the number of offenders sent to prison for violent crimes. Drug offenders currently make up 62 percent of the federal inmate population, up from 22 percent in 1980.[3] Add to this the fact that most of these prisoners are nonviolent offenders put there under mandatory minimum sentencing laws and the explanation for why this country is running out of prison space should be readily apparent. The second most prevalent, as well as disheartening, result of this movement is the death of innocent victims. The support for this result can be found in the obituary section of the daily newspaper or on the five oclock news. Even the smallest of towns have been afflicted with death due to drugs. Back-alley heroin and basement-lab manufactured amphetamines present the same problem as moonshine alcohol; it might be the real thing but it might also kill anyone who takes it because the manufacturer didnt know what they were doing. The huge profits from drugs are also the major motivation for turf wars between gangs, many of whom seem to have fairly bad aim and hit innocent bystanders as often as each other. To add insult to injury, the greatest backlash of the War on Drugs is the economic and financial damage. In the Cato Policy Analysis No.121 it states:A common estimate of annual black market drug sales would be about $80 billion.[55] Because the black market price of drugs is inflated at the very least 10-fold over wha...
