US War on Drugs Has Cost $1 Trillion and Ten Times More Deaths Than 9-11 and Met None of Its Goals

MEXICO CITY — After 40 years, the United States' war on drugs has cost $1 trillion and hundreds of thousands of lives (MP: 28,400 in Mexico alone in just the last five years, more than ten times the number of casualties in 9-11, see chart above, data here), and for what? Drug use is rampant and violence even more brutal and widespread. Even U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske concedes the strategy hasn't worked.

"In the grand scheme, it has not been successful," Kerlikowske told The Associated Press. "Forty years later, the concern about drugs and drug problems is, if anything, magnified, intensified."

Via Jacob Sullum at Reason.