The Role of the 1970s War on Drugs in the Massive Prison Industrial Complex
By Alex Schultz
In the early 1970s, the Nixon Administration coined the term the “War on Drugs”, which began with implementing a series of stricter drug policies, knowing that this war would cost billions of dollar in the American budget. The Reagan Administration then further pushed this initiative. The results led to a 500% increase in incarceration rates in the past 40 years, with enormous economic implications affecting American taxpayers, businesses in the prison industrial complex, and families of those who have a loved one incarcerated.
Policymakers from state and federal governments passed harsh sentencing laws in hopes to diminish drug usage and crime.
While the crackdown on drug usage in America sent hundreds of thousand to jail where drugs could not be abused, the result of this massive displacement has made drugs much more potent. The laws protecting drugs from entering this country are extremely similar regardless of potency, which in turn makes the difference in more-potent and less-potent drugs much smaller. What ended up happening was that drug abusers ended up buying the more-potent drugs due to the smaller, decreasing price differential in higher and lower potencies. Evidence from economist Mark Thornton highlights a 93% increase in marijuana potency, largely due to the increase of federal expenditures. The same results occurred during the 1920s with the prohibition of alcohol. Relatively, the price of hard liquor and more alcohol infused beverages dropped dramatically, resulting in high consumption of moonshine and gin. While policymakers from state and federal governments passed harsh sentencing laws in hopes to diminish drug usage and crime, the opposite effect happened. From 1971 to 2007, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s data showed that the amount of drug overdoses per 100,00 deaths increased by a factor of 10, evidence that the War on Drugs did not help drug addiction in this country.
Richard Nixon and his government confidents planned to attack drug usage using a supply source control method. In a demand-driven industry, the government’s vision was to nail the suppliers of drugs without focusing on the demand. This breaks a fundamental rule of economics, which states that where there is profit to be made from demand of a good or service, supply will always reach that demand because money is the sole driver of all economies. Politics will always be beaten by money, a large reason why terrorist groups, corrupt regimes, and drug organizations can thrive even through adverse political situations. The policies enacted massively incarcerated drug dealers, increased the price of products associated with drug usage and creation, and intensified patrol and protection across our borders, specifically Mexico. These policies have cost the United States $26 billion dollars a year, and they haven’t even worked. Between 2014 and 2016, opioid overdose deaths increased by approximately 48 percent nationwide, clear evidence that the supply of narcotics in America has not decreased, but has gotten worse. An even more alarming stat is that while America represents only 5 percent of the world’s population, Americans consume a staggering 80 percent of all opioids produced globally. Opioid addiction pours into many pools of our society, including health care, unemployment, and incarceration, which in turn has costed a $504 billion dollar yearly expense.
The chart above is data collected from the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Each month, a new chart such as the one from above is produced to reflect what inmates are going to jail for. Of course, drug offenses have over 50 percent of the charges, followed by immigration with 10.6 percent which is interesting because both of these crimes are technically “non-violent”, yet they are the leading cause of incarceration in America. The worse effect this system has is not inside the prison cells and behind bars, but with the families impacted by incarceration. Incarcerated citizens had a median income of $19,185 prior to incarceration, which is 41 percent lower than non-incarcerated citizens. The War on Drugs is responsible for this. Because of the heavy influx of opioids and marijuana in low-income communities in the 1960s and 1970s, a cycle of incarceration in these communities has taken over families, education systems, and everyday life in these areas. Matched with the policies enacted in the late 20th century, low-income communities do not stand a chance against the odds that they or a family member will be effected by either drug addiction or incarceration, most of the time with one causing the other.
Our country must find ways to diminish demand for these illegal products.
Now that I have poured a copious amount of discouraging statistics in your ears, its time to talk about what can be done to fix this. A major implication of the War on Drugs is the potential legalization of marijuana. Of the drug offenses in the chart above, marijuana was responsible for 28 percent of the drug charges. Legalizing marijuana would save $7.7 billion dollars annually, as well as yielding roughly $6 billion in tax revenue. Regulated marijuana would vastly decrease the demand for drugs off the legal market. Another method of decreasing incarceration rates for drug offense is the implementation of naxolone, a medication with reverse effect of opioid addiction. In 2013, there was an 11 percent decrease in opioid overdoses in Massachusetts when passing this medication out to families of those at risk of overdosing. There are policies and methods that exist to dwindle incarceration rates for drug offenses, but we cannot begin with ways to halt supply. Our country must find ways to diminish demand for these illegal products. Some Americans believe that is to legalize marijuana and take a more alleviated approach to drug usage. Others believe a policy that attack drug kingpins at the source, supply side economic policy, still has not reached its full potential and must be re-explored. The question of the opioid crisis, the impacts of the War on Drugs, and the ever-so increasing rates of incarceration will all be addressed in the upcoming election. When it does, I ask that you vote for the candidates who provide a demand-based treatment, rather than supply, because when there is demand for a product, someone, no matter how illegal and corrupt, will find a way to make a profit and eventually place hundreds of thousands Americans behind bars.
Citations:
Carroll, Lauren. “The War on Drugs and Incarceration Rates.” Politifact, Poynter Institute , 10 July 2016, www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jul/10/cory-booker/how-war-drugs-affected-incarceration-rates/.
Keck, Michelle, and Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera. “U.S. Drug Policy and Supply-Side Strategies: Assessing Effectiveness and Results.” Norteamérica, Elsevier, 28 Dec. 2016, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1870355016300209.
O’Hara, Max. “Narcotics Nation: The Economics Behind the War on Drugs and Why US Drug Policy Fails to Yield Results.” Journal of International Service, 21 Apr. 2017, jis-online.org/2017/04/13/narcotics-nation-the-economics-behind-the-war-on-drugs-and-why-us-drug-policy-fails-to-yield-results/.
Pearl, Betsy. “Ending the War on Drugs: By the Numbers.” Center for American Progress, 27 June 2018, http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/criminal-justice/reports/2018/06/27/452819/ending-war-drugs-numbers/.
Powell, Benjamin, and Craig J. Richardson. “The Economics Behind the U.S. Government’s Unwinnable War on Drugs.” Econlib, 3 June 2019, http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2013/Powelldrugs.html.
The Currency of Confinement 